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Wolter Musx Mskehill, tn. 
#1927 


BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR- 


HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING IN THE 
RENAISSANCE 


THE COLLECTORS 

HOMER MARTIN, POET IN LANDSCAPE 
ESTIMATES IN ART 

THE PORTRAITS OF DANTE 


urpsag 


NIOYIA AHL JO NOILIN AOC ‘OLLOID 


A HISTORY OF 
mALIAN 
mALNITING 


By 


FRANK JEWETT MATHER, JR. 
nd Do vale BOS 


Professor of Art and Archaeology in 
Princeton University 


NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1923 


CopyYRIGHT; 1023, 
BY 


HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 


First Printing, May, 1923 
Second Printing, October, 1924 
Third Printing, June, 1925 
Fourth Printing, October, 1926 


Printed in the United States of America 


Tit GETTY CENTER 


To 
Sia pay 


In FRIENDSHIP 


“ 


PREFACE 


This book has grown out of lectures which were delivered at 
the Cleveland Art Museum in 1919-20. There I had ideal 
hearers, beginners who wanted to learn and were willing to 
follow a serious discussion. Since I aim at the same sort of a 
reader now, I have only slightly retouched and amplified the 
original manuscript. This is frankly a beginner’s book... I have 
had to omit whatever might confuse the novice, including many 
painters inherently delightful. Controversial problems for the 
same reason have been when possible avoided. When, however, 
I have had to cope with. such, I have depended more on my 
own eyes and judgment than on the written words of others. 
But the latest literature has also been used, so that even the 
adept should here and there find something to his purpose. 

For opinions on contested points, I have given my authority 
or personal reason in notes, which, in order not to clutter up 
the text, are printed at the end. By the same token, hints on 
reading and private study are tucked away in the last pages 
where they will not bother readers who do not need or want 
them. While I hope the book will be welcome in the class- 
room, | have had as much in mind the intelligent traveller in 
Europe and the private student. Throughout I have had 
before me the kind of introduction to Italian painting that 
would have been helpful to me thirty years ago in those days 
of bewildered enthusiasm when I[ was making my Grand Tour. 


THe AUTHOR 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 
I. GioTTo AND THE NEw FLORENTINE HUMANISM 


Il. SIENA AND THE CONTINUING OF THE MEDIAEVAL 
STYLE 


III. Masaccio AND THE NEw REALISM 


TV. Fra Firtieprpo Lipp1 AND THE NEw NarRRATIVE 
STYLE 


V. Dawn oF THE GOLDEN AGE: 
BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 


VI. THe Gotpen AGE: RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO 
VII. VENETIAN PaIntTING BEFoRE TITIAN 


VIII. Tirtan aND VENETIAN PAINTING IN THE RENAIS- 
SANCE. 


IX. Tue REALISTs AND ECLECTICS 


TN a 
PRR ReTORT READING. “5 ¢ . oe 6 oo oe Eke 


er ys er i PELE ee ee 


Vil 


PAGE 


I 


59 
109 


157 


201 
263 
323 


389 
451 
473 
489 
491 


(OrrA pare Rat 


GIOTTO AND THE NEW FLORENTINE 
HUMANISM 


The Florentine ideal of Mass and Emotion — Its Humanism — The City of 
Florence about 1300 — The Position and Methods of the Painter — The 
General demand for Religious Painting — Accelerated by the religious 

~ reforms of 1200, and changed in character — Insufficiency of the current 
Italo-Byzantine Style— Experiments towards a new manner: Duccio 
and the Sienese, Cimabue, Cavallini and the “Isaac Master’ — Giotto 
— Immediate followers of Giotto, Andrea Orcagna and the return to 
sculptural methods— Later Panoramists, Andrea Bonaiuti and the 


Spanish Chapel. 


Leonardo da Vinci, from the summit of Florentine art, has 
written “What should first be judged in seeing if a picture be 
good is whether the movements are appropriate to the mind 
of the figure that moves. And again he has expressed some- 
what differently the highest merits of painting as “‘the creation 
of relief (projection) where there is none.” For Florence, at 
least, these notions are authoritative, and they may well 
serve as text for most that I shall say about Florentine paint- 
ing. To give significant emotion convincing mass — this 
was the problem of the Florentine painter from the moment 
when Giotto about the year 1300 began to find himself, to 
that day more than two centuries and a half later when 
Michelangelo died. No Florentine master of a strenuous sort 
ever failed to perceive this mission, and no unstrenuous artist 
was ever fully Florentine. This twofold aim — humanistic, 
in choice and mastery of emotion; scientific, in search for those 
indications which most vividly express mass where no mass 


is — this twofold endeavor Florence shared with the only 
I 


2 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


ereater city of art, Athens. Thus Florence is to the art of 
today what Athens was to that of classical antiquity. 

In these two little communal republics were discovered and 
worked out to perfection all our ideals of humanistic beauty. 
Florence saw God, His Divine Son, the Blessed Virg'n, and 
the saints quite as Athens had seen the gods of Olympus, the 
demi-gods, and the heroes, simply as men and women of the 
noblest physical and moral type. Both agreed in magnifying 
and idealizing the people one ordinarily sees. For greater 
beauty, Athens represented them nude or lightly draped; for 
greater dignity, Florence chose the solemn garb of the Roman 
forum. Whether pagan or Christian, the guardians of a 
people’s morality were to be above haste, excitement, or any 
transient emotion. They were to express intensities of feeling, 
but a feeling more composed, permanent, and disciplined, than 
that of every day. Judgment and criticism count for as much 
in both arts as emotional inspiration. The great Florentine 
artist is a thinker; he is often poet and scientist, sculptor and 
architect, besides being a painter. Behind his painting lies 
always a problem of mind, and as sheer personalities the great- 
est painters of Siena, Venice, and Lombardy often seem mere 
nobodies when compared even with the minor Florentines. We 
should know something about a city that produced personality 
so generously, and before considering Giotto, the first great 
painter Florence bred, we shall do well to look at Florence as 
he saw it about the year 1300, being a man in the thirties. 

Florence was then as now a little city, its population about 
100,000 souls, but it was growing. The old second wall of about 
two miles’ circuit was already condemned in favor of a tur- 
reted circuit of over six. Up the Arno the forest-clad ridge of 
Vallombrosa was much as it is today; down the valley the 
jagged peaks of the Carrara mountains barred the way to the 
sea. The surrounding vineyards and olive orchards by reason 
of encroaching forest were less extensive than they are now, 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 3 


but through every gate and from every tower one could see 
smiling fields guarded by battlemented villas. In the city, the 
fortress towers of the old nobility, partizans mostly of the 
foreign Emperor, rose thickly, but already dismantled at their 
fighting tops, for the people, meaning strictly the ruling mer- 
chant and manufacturing classes, had lately taken the rule 
from the old nobles. Many of these had fled; some had been 
banished, as was soon to be that reckless advocate of the 
emperor, Dante Alighieri, an excellent poet of love foolishly 
dabbling in politics. Other patricians sulked in their fortress 
palaces. Some shrewdly got themselves demoted and joined 
the ruling trade guilds. Of these guilds a big four, five, or six, 
governed the city, while a minor dozen had political privilege. 
Only guild members voted for the city officers. The guilds 
combined the function of a trade union and an employer’s 
association, including all members of the craft from the young- 
est apprentice to’ the richest boss-contractor. Such a guild as 
the notaries, must have been much like a bar association, 
while the wholesale merchants’ guild must have resembled a 
chamber of commerce. ‘The guild folk had early allied them- 
selves with the Pope, the only permanent representative of the 
principle of order in Italy. The Pope was also the bulwark of 
the new free communes against the claims of the Teutonic 
Emperors. So in Florence piety, liberty, and prosperity were 
convertible terms. 

Within the narrow walls was a bustling, neighborly, squab- 
bling and making-up life. Everybody knew everybody else. 
The craftsman worked in the little open archways you may 
still see in the Via San Gallo, in sight and hearing of the pass- 
ing world. Of weavers’ shops alone there were 300. No 
western city was ever prouder than Florence in those days. 
Her credit was good from the Urals to the Pentland Hills. Her 
gold florin was everywhere standard exchange. She had secret 
ways of finishing the fine cloths that came in ships and caravans 


4. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 
from Ghent, Ypres, and Arras; she handled the silks of China 


and converted the raw pelts of the north into objects of fashion. 

Her civic pride was actively expressing itself in building. 
Between 1294 and 1299 she had projected a new cathedral, 
the great Franciscan church of Santa Croce, a new town hall, 
and the massive walls we still see. For stately buildings she 
had earlier had only the Baptistry, in which every baby was 
promptly christened, and the new church of the Friars Preach- 
ers (Dominicans), Santa Maria Novella. In considering this 
Florence you must think of a hard-headed, full-blooded, am- 
bitious community, frankly devoted to money-making, but 
desiring wealth chiefly as a step towards fame. Since the 
painter could provide fame in this world and advance one’s 
position in the next, his estate was a favored one. 

4 The painter himself was just a fine craftsman. He kept a 
shop and called it such — a bottega. He worked only to order. 
There were no exhibitions, no museums, no academies, no art 
schools, no prizes no dealers. The painters modestly joined the 
guild of the druggists (speziali), who were their color makers, 
quite as the up-to-date newspaper reporter affiliates himself 
with the typographical union. When a rich man wanted a 
picture, he simply went to a painter’s shop and ordered it, 
laying down as a matter of course the subject and everything 
about the treatment that interested him. If the work was of 
importance, a contract and specifications were drawn up. The 
kind of colors, pay by the job or by the day, the amount to 
be painted by the contracting artist himself, the time of com- 
pletion, with or without penalty — all this was precisely nomi- 
nated in the bond. Naturally the painter used his shop- 
assistants and apprentices as much as possible. Often he did 
little himself except heads and principal figures. But he made 
the designs and carefully supervised their execution on panel 
or wall. A Florentine painter’s bottega then had none of the 
preciousness of a modern painter’s studio. It was rather like 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 5 


a decorator’s shop of today, the master being merely the 
business head and guiding artistic taste. When we speak of 
a fresco by Giotto, we do not mean that Giotto painted much 
of it, any more than a La Farge window implies that our great 
American master of stained-glass design himself cut and set 
the glass. The painter of Florence had to be a jack-of-all- 
trades, a color grinder, a cabinet maker, and a wood carver; 
a gilder; to be capable of copying any design and of inventing 
fine decorative features himself. He must be equally com- 
petent in the delicate methods of tempera painting as in the 
resolute procedures of fresco. / 

These two methods set distinct limits to the work and its 
effects. Ihe colors were ground up day by day in the shop. 
Each had its little pot. There was no palette. Hence only a 
few colors were used, and with little mixing. For tempera 
painting a good wooden panel — preferably of poplar — was 
grounded with successive coats of finest plaster of Paris in glue 
and rubbed down to ivory smoothness. The composition was 
then copied in minutely from a working drawing. The gold 
background inherited from the workers in mosaic was laid on 
in pure leaf. The composition was first lightly shaded and 
modelled either in green or brown earth, and then finished up 
a bit at a time, in colors tempered with egg or vegetable al- 
bumen. The paints were thick and could not be swiftly 
manipulated; the whole surface set and so hardened that re- 
touching was difficult. How so niggling a method produced so 
broad and harmonious effects will seem a mystery to the mod- 
ern artist. It was due to system and sacrifice. Though the 
work was done piecemeal, everything was thought out in 
advance. Dark shadows and accidents of lighting which would 
mar the general blond effect were ignored. The beauty desired 
was not that of nature, but that of enamels and semi-precious 
stones. hese panels are glorious in azures, cinnabars, crim- 
sons, emerald-greens, and whites partaking of all of these hues. 


6 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Their delicacy is enhanced by carved frames, at this moment, 
1300, simply gabled and moulded; later built up and arched 
and fretted with the most fantastic gothic features. 

If the painter in tempera required chiefly patience and deli- 
cacy, the painter in fresco must have resolution and audacity. 
He must calculate each day’s work exactly, and a whole day’s 
work could be spoiled by a single slip of the hand in the tired 
evening hour. For fresco, the working sketch was roughly 
copied in outline on a plaster wall. Then any part selected 
for a day’s work was covered with a new coat of fine plaster. 
The effaced part of the design must be rapidly redrawn on the 
wet ground. Then the colors were laid on from their little 
pots, and only the sound mineral colors which resist lime could 
be employed. The vehicle was simply water. The colors were 
sucked deep into the wet plaster, and united with it to forma 
surface as durable as the wall itself. Generally the colors 
were merely divided into three values, — light, pure colors, and 
dark. Everything was kept clear, rather flat, and blond, 
highly simple and beautifully decorative. One of the later 
painters, Cennino Cennini (active about 1400), tells us that a 
single head was a day’s work for a good frescante. The touch 
had to be sure, for a misstroke meant scraping the wet plaster 
off, relaying it, and starting all over again. The fresco painter 
accordingly needed discipline and method. Nothing could be 
farther from modern inspirational methods. Where every- 
thing was systematized and calculated in advance, you will 
see it was quite safe for a master to entrust his designs to pupils 
who knew his wishes. Every fresco when dry was more or less 
retouched in tempera, but the best artists did this sparingly, 
knowing that the retouches would soon blacken badly or 
flake off. 

So much for the shop methods. Now for him who makes 
shops possible — the patron. A wealthy Florentine as natur-' 
ally wanted to invest in a frescoed chapel as a wealthy Amer- 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 7 


ican does in a fleet of motor cars. Considering the changed 
value of money, one indulgence was about as costly as the other. 
But the Florentine never quite regarded paintings as luxuries. 
They were necessary to him. He loved them. They enhanced 
his prestige in this world and improved his chances in the next. 
Then to beautify a church was really to magnify the liberty 
and prosperity of Florence, which largely derived from the 
Holy See. Recall that every Florentine was born a Catholic, 
baptized in the fair Church of St. John with the name of a 
saint. This saint, he believed, could aid him morally and 
materially, was in every sense his celestial patron. It paid to 
do the saint honor, and that could best be done through the 
painter's art. The poorest man might have a small portrait 
of his patron, a rich man might endow a chapel and cause all 
his patron’s miracles to be pictured on the wall. ‘Think also 
that every altar —a dozen or more in every large church — 
was a shrine’, containing the bread and wine that by the never- 
ceasing miracle of the Mass became the Saviour’s body and 
blood; and was also a reliquary or tomb, containing in whole 
or part the body of some saint. Every altar then, and every 
chapel inclosing one, cried out for a twofold interpretation of 
its meaning. Everything about the Eucharist had to be ex- 
plained (involving pretty nearly all of Biblical history), and the 
particular relic required similar illumination. Since many of 
the faithful could not read, and the Catholic Church has ever 
been merciful as regards sermonizing, these explanations of the 
altar as miracle shrine of Our Lord and as tomb of a particular 
saint were best made pictorially, and generally were so made. 
Such motives for picture-making Florence of course shared 
with the entire Christian world. It remains to explain why 
she wanted more painting and better than any other medieval 
city. She wanted more painting chiefly because of her excep- 
tional civic pride and prosperity, she wanted better painting 
because she had moved ahead of the world towards finer, 


8 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


more passionate, and conscious experiences of life which the 
older painting was powerless to express. About the year 1200, 
a century before the time we are considering, there flourished 
two great religious leaders who gave to Christianity a new 
dignity and appeal. St. Dominic, with his disciple, St. Thomas 
Aquinas, endeavored to make Christianity more reasonable, 
St. Francis of Assisi endeavored to make it more heartfelt and 
compassionate. They founded two monastic orders with di- 
vergent yet harmonious aims. The Dominicans called men to 
a life of study and self-examination, enlisting the human reason 
to explain and justify the universe under the Christian scheme; 
the Franciscans called men to’ poverty, humility, and chastity, 
and service to the unfortunate. Between the two — one sup- 
plying the light of the reason and the other the light of the 
heart — they overcame heresies which had menaced both 
Christianity and civilization and roused the Church out of its 
dogmatic slumber. It was no longer enough for the Church to 
threaten. Men yielded to her now only on condition that their 
heads be convinced or their hearts touched. In Florence, where 
a rationalizing shrewdness and a real warm-heartedness singu- 
larly blended, the double appeal was irresistible. By and large 
the whole city either schematized with the Dominicans or 
slummed with the Franciscans. Here was urgent new matter 
requiring an art that could move and persuade. 

Together with this religious revival and the political and 
commercial progress we have noted, came a literary revival. 
Before the end of the 13th century such poets as Guido Guini- 
zelli, Guido Cavalcanti, and Dante Alighieri had so reshaped 
the rude vulgar tongue that it became worthy of its Latin 
succession. The refinements of chivalric love came to Flor- 
ence in melodious verse, and what the poets called the “sweet 
new style,” 21 dolce stil nuovo, in diction presaged a similar 
sweet new style of painting. Alongside of the poets, Brunetto 
Latini in the Tesoro shows glimmerings of scientific interest, 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 9 


and Giovanni Villani lends substance and dignity to the work 
of the chronicler. Already the sculptors Nicola and Giovanni 
of neighboring Pisa had grasped the beauties respectively of 
classic sculpture and the noble intensity of that of the Gothic 
North. All this immensely increased that sum of fine thinking, 
feeling, and seeing which underlies all great art. 

To express these new emotions the old painting was inade- 
quate. Italy through the so-called Dark Ages produced art 
abundantly. Wherever power and order asserted themselves 
amid the welter of war and oppression, stately buildings rose 
and these were decorated. Thus at Rome, where the popes 
gradually added temporal to spiritual power, splendid basilicas 
grew over the tombs of the martyrs. At Ravenna, through the 
6th and 7th centuries the seat of the Byzantine and Gothic 
sovereignties, magnificent churches and baptistries were cov- 
ered with pictorial mosaics. In Sicily, at Messina, Cefalu and 
Palermo, the sway of the Norman kings in the eleventh and 
twelfth centuries expressed itself in churches and civic buildings 
of the utmost splendor, which were adorned with mosaics by 
Greek masters. When the fugitives from the valleys of the 
Po, Adige, and Piave, and Brenta fled from Attila to the Vene- 
tian fens, there again was a beginning of great building. Where- 
ever there was a powerful primate as at Milan, Como, Parma, 
Pisa, or a wide ruling abbot as at Subiaco, Monte Cassino, 
Capua, you will find art. 

But hardly, except perhaps in architecture, Italian art. We 
have sporadic provincial expressions dominated from afar by 
the prestige of the Eastern Roman Empire. At Constanti- 
nople there was a permanent court, a ceremonious civilization, 
an artistic blending of the traditions of old Greece and of the 
mysterious Levant. The merchants of the world sought from 
Byzantium, jewelry, enamels, embroideries, brocades, carved 
ivories, and pictured manuscripts. She was to the early 
Middle Ages what Paris is to ours — the zsthetic fashion 


IO _ HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


maker of the world, — and her skilled artists went far afield 
as so many missionaries of the Byzantine style. We find them 
making the mosaics of Ravenna in the 6th and 7th centuries, 
of St. Mark’s at Venice from the 9th century, of many Roman 


Fic. 1. Byzantine Narrative Style about 1300. Detail from Mosaic 
Book Covers in the Opera del Duomo. 


churches from an even earlier date, of Palermo in the 12th, 
and of the Baptistry at Florence in the 13th. This Byzantine 
manner, as practiced by the travelling Greek artists and by 
their innumerable Italian imitators, is the real starting point 
and jump-off place for Italian painting. Hence in first study- 
ing the Byzantine style we do but imitate the Italian painters 
who immediately preceded Giotto. 

Byzantine pictures have come down to us on the largest and 
on the smallest scale —in the great mosaics and wall paint- 
ings, and as well on small panels and in the illustrated books 
used in the ritual of the church. Both are important. The 
mural decorations are what the early Italian painter had con- 
stantly before his eye; the miniatured psalters, Gospels, lec- 
tionaries, chorals and prayer books, afforded the patterns 
from which he drew with little alteration the standard com- 
positions of the Annunciation to Mary, the Nativity of Christ, 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 11 


His Adoration by the Shepherds and Kings, His Baptism, the 
Raising of Lazarus, the Last Supper, Crucifixion, Descent into 
Hell, Resurrection, and Ascension. But Byzantine design is 
most imposing in its monumental phase. The most careless 


Fic. 2. Mosaic in the Cathedral, Pisa. St. John, left, is by Cimabue, 
1302; the Christ is in good Byzantine tradition; the Virgin, right, 
is some twenty years later. 


traveller still feels awe before those solemn figures of Christ 
supreme ruler (Pankrator) and his Mother queen of heaven which 
are seen throned against a background of azure or gold and at- 
tended by solemn figures of apostles and martyrs, Figure 2. 
The forms are flat, — silhouettes enriched by interior tracery, 
the arrangement in the space formal, symmetrical, highly deco- 
rative. The smaller narrative compositions,? Figure 1, are 
clearly conceived but have small emotional appeal. For this 
reason the Italians of the Golden Age spoke of the Byzantine 
style as rude. This is an error. Rude in the hands of half- 
trained local imitators, the style as formulated in the 9th century 


12 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


at Constantinople was highly sophisticated and decoratively of 
great refinement. It was based on an admirable system of color 
spotting and a fine understanding of silhouette. The contours 
were cast in easy conventional curves. These were enriched 
within by hatchings and splintery angles of gold which con- 
trasted effectively with the fluent outlines. Everything was 
done by precept and copybook. In four centuries before the 
year 1300, the style showed little change, indeed is still alive in 
the mountains of Macedonia and, until the Revolution, in 
Russia. The Byzantine artist seldom looked at a fellow 
mortal with artistic intent. He looked at some earlier picture 
or considered his own color preferences. Conventional and 
anzemic as the narrative style was, it did all that was required 
of it. Nothing better serves the purpose of an authoritative 
Church than the awe-inspiring Christs of the Lombard and 
Sicilian and Roman apses, and so long as the Church felt no 
duty beyond that of plain statement of her claims, the un- 
felt narratives from the Scriptures served every religious need. 

It was different when under the leading of St. Dominic and 
St. Francis,? the Church eagerly wished to persuade men. 
Men may well have been frightened or even instructed by a 
Byzantine picture; nobody was ever persuaded by one. It took 
a century to work away from the Byzantine style, so deeply was 
itrooted. In fact, from the year 1226, that of St. Francis’s 
death, to about the end of the century, such artists as Guido 
of Siena, Coppo di Marcovaldo, Giunta of Pisa, Jacopo Torriti, | 
Giovanni Cosma, Duccio, and Cimabue chiefly restudied the 
old Byzantine manner. They wished to learn how to build 
creditably before they began to tear down. Such reverent 
experiment extending over two generations only proved that 
the breach with Byzantine formalism was inevitable. 

With the deepening and broadening of personal, civic, and - 
religious emotions, the painter found new exactions laid upon 
him which the bloodless art of Byzantium could not satisfy. 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 13 


New life called for new forms to express it. We find in 
sculpture from about the year 1260, that of Niccolo Pisano’s 
first pulpit — wholly classical in its dignity —a kindred en- 
deavor in advance of the art of painting. The renewal took 
three forms: the more conservative spirits accepted the By- 


Fic. 3. Tuscan Master about Fic. 4. Cimabue. Madonna in 
1285. — Otto Kabn, N.Y. Majesty — U ffizi. 


zantine formulas but endeavored to refine on them in a realistic 
sense, to add grace to austerity. Such moderate development 
of the old style fixed the character of the school of Siena and 
was magnificently initiated by its greatest artist, Duccio, 
active about 1300. A very beautiful Madonna of this general 
tendency is in the collection of Mr. Otto Kahn at New York, 
Figure 3. It has been quite variously attributed.* It seems to 
me, however, a pure Tuscan work by Coppo or a painter akin 
to him. For the greater spirits such a reform was inadequate. 
Refine the Byzantine formulas to the utmost — there was no 


14 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


gain, rather loss in strength. Accordingly a vehement spirit 
like Cimabue,® acknowledgedly father of the Florentine school, 
accepts the Byzantine tradition loyally, but seeks to make its 
rigid mannerisms express the new religious passions. At times 
he is successful at this unlikely task of putting new wine into 
old bottles. His great enthroned Madonna at Florence, Fig- 
ure 4, with solemn angels in attendance and grim patriarchs be- 
low her throne, may have been painted as early as 1285. It 
is faithful to the old monumental tradition — akin to the Christs 
and Marys of the mosaics — in its impressive richness is one . 
of the most majestic things the century produced. It reveals 
the docility of its creator but only partially his power. We 
have hardly his hand but surely an echo of his influence in the 
tragic crucifix in the museum of Santa Croce. It is the moment 
of agony, and the powerful body writhes against the nails, 
while the head sinks in death. It may represent hundreds 
of similar crosses that stood high in air on the rood beam be- 
fore the chancel, in sight both of the preacher and his public. 

Somewhere about 1294, Cimabue was called to Assisi to 
decorate the church in which St. Francis was buried. His 
part was the choir and transepts of the upper church. In the 
cross vault he painted the four evangelists, on the walls he 
spread the stories of St. Peter and St. Paul, the legends of the 
Virgin scenes from the Apocalypse, the gigantic forms of the 
archangels and a Calvary, Figure 5, that is one of the most 
moving expressions of Christian art. Chipped and_ black- 
ened, their lights become dark through chemical change, 
these wall paintings retain an immense power and veracity. 
The Byzantine forms gain a paradoxical solidity, like that of 
bronze. The convulsion of the figure of Christ is given back in 
the wild gestures of the mourning women and the terrified Jews. 
It is the moment of the earthquake and the opening of tombs; a 
cosmic terror and despair pervade the place. The work is 
hampered and rude but completely expressive. The sensitive 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM — 15 


Japanese critic and man of the world, Okakura Kakuzo, used 
to regard these sooty frescoes in the transepts of the Francis- 
can basilica as the high point of all European art, which should 
at least induce the tourist and the student to give a second 
look at these battered and fading masterpieces. Recently an 


Fic. 5. Cimabue. Calvary. Fresco.— Upper Church, Assisi. 


inscribed date, 1296, has been discovered on the choir wall 
which settles a long vexed question of chronology. The upper 
part of the work in the transepts and choir must have been 
going on for some years earlier, and the entire decoration of the 
Upper Church should roughly be comprised between 1294 and 
1300. Cimabue died about 1302 while working on the apsidal 
mosaic at Pisa, where the St. John is by his hand, Figure 2. 
He had brought life and passion into Italian painting, as his 
younger contemporary Giovanni Pisano had into Italian 
sculpture. Cimabue’s defect — that of a noble spirit — was 
the faith that the old pictorial form could contain the new 
surging emotions. 


16 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Colder spirits, as is often the case, more readily found the 
right way. And the discovery was made at Rome where the 
sculptured columns, arches, and sarcophaghi, the pagan wall 


Fic. 6. Pietro Cavallini. Dormition of the Virgin. Mosaic. — 
S. M. in Trastevere, Rome. 


paintings and the earliest Christian mosaics combined to con- 
tinue the lesson of classic humanism. A remarkable family of 
decorators, the Cosmati; with such contemporaries as Jacopo 
Torriti and Filippo Rusuti begin very cautiously to free them- 
selves from Byzantine trammels. But it was a painter, Pietro 
Cavallini,> who more fully grasped that glory that had been 
Rome. In 1291 he designed for the church of Santa Maria in 
Trastevere a Madonna and four stories of the Christ Child in 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM _ 17 


mosaic. Here we glimpse a new pictorial form, Figure 6. 
Those Byzantine hooks and hatchings which were quite false 
to form give way to a reasonable structure in light and dark, 
the hair no longer wild and ropy, is disposed in sculpturesque 


Fic. 7. Pietro Cavallini. Apostles, fresco, from. Last Judgment. — 
Santa Cecelia in Trastevere. 
locks, the draperies are no longer a cobweb pattern, but cast 
in broad and classic folds. All these improvements may be 
noted in more complete form in the frescoed Last Judgment 
which has recently been uncovered in the church of Santa 
Cecilia, Figure 7. Here the heads of Christ and the Apostles 
are well built in carefully graduated light and shade, while the 
draperies suggest Hellenistic statuary. But the renovation is 
on the whole cold and academic. Cavallini has not much 
more to say than -the Byzantines, but that little he says 
with far greater gravity and truthfulness. He was a_ lucid 
and industrious but not a fine or strong spirit. His work 
later at Naples — in the Church of the Donna Regina, about 
1310 — shows that when he will express strong emotions he 
becomes merely hectic. Yet he recovered for Italian painting 
more than a hint of the choice naturalism of old Rome, and 


18 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


that is his sufficient glory. There is greater power and knowl- 
edge than his in the work of such contemporaries as the un- 
known painters of the frescoed heads of prophets in Santa 
Maria Maggiore at Rome and of the stories of Isaac in the 
Upper Church at Assisi. These show a resolute and intelligent 
effort to draw in masses of light and shade, and as well an 
ambition to recover the gravity of the early Christian mosaics. 
It is no wonder that some critics ascribe such dramatic and 
superbly constructed frescoes as The Betrayal of Esau to 
young Giotto, Figure 8, but the art is too mature for any 
young artist. We have rather to do with a great personality 
of Roman training who broke the way for Giotto. Caval- 
caselle suggests, I think rightly, that the Florentine, Gaddo 
Gaddi, may have done some of this work. But we are safe 
only in calling this great painter “The Isaac Master.” 
To recapitulate, there were three ways, all imperfect, open 
to a young and progressive painter who like Giotto di Bondone 
was forming a style about the year 1300. He might with the 
Sienese evade the issue of passion and naturalism, choosing for 
gracefulness, he might try over again the great adventure of 
his master Cimabue, endeavoring to bring emotion into the old 
unfit forms, or he might, like Pietro Cavallini, let emotion 
take care of itself and work academically towards better struc- 
ture, drapery, light, and shade. His choice was absolutely 
momentous for modern painting, and I want you to feel that 
the issue was quite consciously and vividly before him, for he 
had spent much of his youth as a humble assistant in the 
basilica at Assisi, where frescoes in the vehement Tuscan man- 
ner of Cimabue and in the dignified Roman style of the Isaac 
Master were being painted side by side. His decision was to 
combine the merits of the two manners —to seek, like his 
master, sincerity and depth of emotion, but to embody it in 
the new and nobler forms of the Roman school. This decision 
virtually fixed the character of Christian art in Italy — it was 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 19 


to be warm and humanistic, but it was to revive much of that 
abstract nobility which old Rome had inherited from Greece. 
Thus Italian painting at the outset took a classic stamp which 


Fic. 8. “The Isaac Master.” Esau before Isaac. Fresco. 
— Upper Church, Assisi. 
when true to itself it has never lost. In fundamental ideas of 
beauty, there is no real difference between Giotto, Masaccio, 
Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo. 
Giotto di Bondone,’ according to the best information we 


20 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


have on a disputed point, was born in 1266, at the village of 
Colle, in the lovely valley of the Mugello. His people were 
prosperous and his way smooth. I see no reason for doubting 
the charming legend told by Ghiberti that Cimabue found the 
lad Giotto by the roadside diligently scratching the outlines of 
a sheep on a slate, and that that was the beginning of their 
association. In any case, we may surmise that he was early 
with Cimabue as apprentice and eventually went with the 
Master to Assisi to grind colors, clean brushes, and paint 
under direction. To be at that moment in the Franciscan 
Basilica was to be at the greatest creative center of the world. 
It seems to me likely that Giotto may have had a considerable 
part in the actual painting of the Old and New Testament 
stories in the nave, and I believe we may find his earliest de- 
signs in certain frescoes of the upper rows. The Lamenting 
over Christ’s Body, for example, singularly combines the energy 
of Cimabue with the dignity of Cavallini, and there are sig- 
nificant echoes of the composition in Giotto’s later version of 
the same theme at Padua. Tradition also ascribes to Giotto, 
maybe correctly, the Resurrection and Pentecost on the en- 
trance wall.® ; 
After 1296, according to Vasari’s entirely credible account, 
young Giotto took over the direction of the work for the newly 
elected Franciscan General, Giovanni dal Muro. What share 
he had in the vivacious and justly loved stories of St. Francis,° 
in the lower range of the nave, is greatly disputed. Of the 
twenty-eight frescoes involved, it seems clear to me that the 
first and the last three are by an artist more nearly in the 
Sienese tradition, that Nos. I] to XVIII inclusive are designed 
by Giotto in the style of the Old Testament stories above and 
painted by him with a certain amount of assistance, and that 
the rest are largely inspired by Giotto but executed in his 
absence and without his final control. What is more impor- 
tant is the variety and vivacity of these narratives. Young 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM) 21 


Fic. 10. The Sermon to the: 
Birds. — Upper Church, . Assisi. 


Fic. 9. —St. Francis renounces His Fic. 11. St. Francis before the 
Father. — Upper Church, Assist. Soldan. — Upper Church, Assisi. 


22 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Giotto is free to improvise, as he was not in the standard Bible 
subjects, and the mood shifts readily. We have charity, with 
St. Francis giving his cloak to a beggar, in an idyllic landscape; 
family strife in St. Francis renouncing his father, Figure 9; 


EP be Rite. 


Fic. 12. Early Sketch Copy after Giotto’s Mosaic of the Navicella. 
‘Compare Fig. 31.— Metropolitan Museum, New York. 


sorcery in the exorcism of the devils from Arezzo; an odd mix- 
ture of ogreishness and witchcraft, in St. Francis’s Fire Ordeal 
before the Soldan, Figure 11; a great pious intentness, in the 
choristers at the Cradle Rite; intense physical appetite, in the 
Miracle of the Spring; an entrancing blend of reverence and 
humor, in the Sermon to the Birds, Figure 10; stark tragedy 
in the Death of the Knight of Celano. 

Giotto is still chiefly a sprightly illustrator. He is as yet 
insensitive to composition. He often perfunctorily splits his 
groups, giving each a landscape — or architectural back-screen 
quite in the Byzantine manner. His story-telling is brusque 
and without rhythm. His sense of form is already strong 
and growing, but there is little of the ease and style of 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM — 23 


the Isaac frescoes just above. In vitality the stories of St. 
Francis mark a great advance, but they lack the gravity and 
exquisiteness of balance proper to the best mural decoration. 
It was at Rome that young Giotto was to broaden and re- 
fine his art. He was called thither before the year 1300 to 
design the great mosaic of Christ walking on the Sea of Galilee 
beside the tempest-tossed boat of the Apostles. It stood over 
the inside cloister-portal of old St. Peter’s, and has been many 
times moved in the rebuilding of the church, and with each 
move restored, so that what we now see in the porch is entirely 
remade. From certain fragments of the old mosaic, and old 
sketch-copies, Figure 12, we may judge that the Navicella, as the 
Italians loved to call it, was an elaborate composition of great 
dramatic power, the logical consummation of the experiments at 
Assisi. Our best version of the Navicella is Andrea Bonaiuti’s 
adaptation, Figure 31, for the vault of the Spanish Chapel, 1365. 
But Giotto was soon to renounce the facile method of diffuse 
and genial narrative in favor of a concise and massive style, 
akin to sculptured relief, and deeply influenced by the antique. 
The arches and the columns of Imperial Rome are teaching 
their silent lesson, the simple and noble forms of Cavallini 
and his nameless rivals show how painting may vie with 
sculpture in sense of mass and reality. With the problem of 
the representation of mass on a flat surface, Giotto wrestled 
eagerly and triumphantly. With a genius that few painters 
have equalled, he grasped the truth that the figure painter’s 
problem of representing space is chiefly that of emphatically 
suggesting mass. If you convince the eye of the tangiubility 
of your objects, the mind will supply elbow room and air to 
breathe. It isn’t necessary to simulate a box, as the Sienese 
painters often did. The painter who can give a convincing 
sense of mass may handle accessories and perspective with 
the utmost freedom, according to the inner law of his design. 
The painter who thinks first of his space is in every way more 


24 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


bound to the smaller probabilities. Much thinking of this 
sort must have been done by Giotto before he worked out 
his new style at Padua. 

After his return from Rome, Giotto sojourned for a time 
in Florence, and in 1304 or thereabouts painted the gigantic 
Madonna formerly in Ognissanti, Figure 13. It is impressive 
in mass, admirable in the intent expression of the attendant 
angels, rich in color, but the great figure is unhappily crowded 
by the canopy. Giotto is still a bit uncertain as to the rendering 
of space, and makes a good if unpleasing effort to suggest 
depth despite the limitations of a gold background. With all 
its nobility and tenderness, this is by no means so good a deco- 
ration as the great Madonna by. Cimabue, Figure 4, which 
hangs nearby in the Uffizi. 

With the problems of space and mass, Giotto was soon to 
cope triumphantly. A wealthy citizen of Padua, Enrico 
Scrovegni, was planning a new chapel to the Virgin Annun- 
ciate. Doubtless he wished the repose of his father’s soul, 
for his father had been a notorious usurer. Dante inconti- 
nently puts him in hell with other profiteers. Enrico Scro- 
vegni built his chapel near the ruins of a Roman arena and 
dedicated it March 25, 1305. The Arena Chapel was a brick 
box, barrel vaulted within — a magnificent 'space for a fresco 
painter. Giotto spread upon it the noblest cycle of pictures 
known to Christian art. Over the chancel arch he painted 
the Eternal, surrounded by swaying angels, and listening to 
the counter-pleas of Justice and Mercy concerning doomed 
mankind, with the Archangel Gabriel serenely awaiting the 
message that should bring Christ to Mary’s womb and salva- 
tion to earth. This is the Prologue. Opposite on the entrance 
wall is the Epilogue — a last judgment, with Christ enthroned 
as Supreme Judge amid the Apostles, and the just being 
parted from the wicked. Amid the just you may see Enrico 
Scrovegni presenting the chapel to three angels. 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM) 25 


The side walls are ruled off into three rows of pictures, 
with ornate border bands and a basement of sculpturesque 
figures symbolizing the seven virtues and vices. The story reads 
down from above. Below the azure vault and still a little in 
the curve are the stories of the 
Childhood of the Virgin— noth- 
ing in the chapel more simple 
and stately than these.!® The 
middle course is devoted to the 
early deeds of Christ, from his 
birth to the expulsion of the 
money lenders from the temple. 
The lower row depicts His Pas- 
sion ending with the Miracle of 
Pentecost. Much later a disciple 
of Giotto completed the story 
with the last days of the Virgin, 
in the Choir. Thus the narrative 
in its broadest sense is a life of 


the Virgin Mary, including that 
of her Divine Son, and _ both lic. 13. Giotto. Madonna 
lives are brought into an eternal pul aronedss = Uyiee 
scheme of things by the prologue, which shows a relenting 
God, and the Epilogue which shows a now relentless Christ 
awarding bliss and woe to the race for all eternity. 

The first impression of a visitor to the chapel will be a 
feeling of awe qualified by joy in the loveliest of colors. The 
whites of the classical draperies dominate. They are shot 
with rose, or pale blue, or grey green. Certain old enamels 
have the same quality of making the most splendid crimsons, 
blues, and greens seem merely foils to foreground masses of 
white which seem to include by implication all the positive 
colors. It is this bright and original color scheme balancing 
crimsons and azures with violets and greens which makes a 


26 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


thing of beauty out of what would otherwise be a stilted 
checkerboard arrangement. 

Next the eye will realize splendid people gravely occupied 
with solemn acts. There is the strangest blend of passion and 


Fic. 13a. Giotto. St. Joachim and St. Anna at the Beautiful Gate. 
—Arena, Padua. 


decorum. See the eager old man who clutches his wife before 
a massive city gate while she caresses him tenderly, Figure 13a, 
note the firm gentleness of the bearded priest who handles a 
screaming baby before the altar, mark the sense of strain and 
hurry where a mother and child mounted on an ass, Figure 14, 
are pushed and dragged along by an old man and attend- 
ants. Or again, what sinister power in the scene where three 
Jewish magistrates press money upon a haggard, bearded, 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 27 


nervous man. You do not need the bat-like demon prompting 
him to know that it 1s the arch-traitor Judas, Figure 15. Then 
there is a strange, serene, processional composition, with the 
Virgin moving homeward among her friends to a solemn 


Fic. 14. Giotto. The Flight into Egypt.— Arena, Padua. 


music, Figure 16. It has a rhythm like the frieze of the 
Parthenon. Perhaps your eye will fix longest on the scene 
where about the pale body of the dead Christ women wail with 
outstretched hands, or tend the broken body, while bearded 
men, accustomed to the hardness of life, stand in mute sym- 
pathy with folded hands, Figure 17. It is what the Gospel 
ought to look like. How Giotto shows every feeling, push- 
ing its expression just to the verge, and there stopping, so 


28 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


that idyl and tragedy, devotion and wrath, treachery and 
fealty, fear and courage, each keeps its proper and distinguish- 
ing aspect, while all are invested in a common dignity and 
nobility. You will perhaps never have seen an art at once 
so varied and moving, and nev- 
ertheless so monumental, and you 
may well be curious as to the 
method. 

You will see readily that 
these compositions are conceived 
sculpturally. Every one with the 
slightest change could be cut in 
marble. Indeed the seven Vir- 
tues, Figure 18, and seven Vices 
impersonated in monochrome on 
the dado of the chapel are direct 


Fic. 15. Giotto. Judas betraying jmitations of sculpture. The 
Christ. — Arena, Padua. 


figures throughout the life of 
Christ and the Virgin are of even size, and usually all on one 
plane. The landscapes and architectural features are arranged 
simply as frames or backgrounds for the figure groups. The 
figures are, whenever the subject permits, clad in drapery of 
a classic cast. Expression is conveyed not much by the faces, 
which have a uniform Gothic intentness, but by the action of 
the entire figure and especially of the hands. The forms are 
rather squat and massive, yet have a homely gracefulness. 
There is nothing like perspective, and small regard for distance, 
yet the figures have convincing bulk and move gravely in 
adequate space. ' All this is due to the most consummate 
draughtsmanship. Giotto simplifies his seeing; what he cares 
for is the thrust of the shoulder, or the poise of hip, the swing 
of the back from the pelvis, the projection of the chest, the 
balance of the head on the neck and its attachment to the 
shoulders. All these essential facts of mass he represents by 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM — 29 


the simplest lines of direction, by broad masses of light and 
shade, often merely by the tugging lines in drapery that tell 
of the form beneath. The cave men would have understood 
Giotto, and so would the post-impressionists of today. Con- 


Fic. 16. Giotto. The Virgin returning from her wedding.— 
Arena, Padua. 


ciseness, economy, force, mass — these are the technical qual- 
ities of the work, as human insight and tenderness are its 
grace. As the great analytical critic Bernard Berenson has 
well remarked, this painting makes the strongest possible 
appeal to our tactile sense, stirring powerfully all our mem- 
ories of touch, and presenting the painted indications as so 
many swiftly grasped clues to reality. We have to do with a 
magnificently conceived shorthand. No artist before or since 
has made a greater expenditure of mind or achieved a more 
notable inventiveness than Giotto in the Arena Chapel. 


30 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


It was dedicated March 25, 1305, Giotto being nearly forty 
years old, and it was probably not completely painted on the 
day of dedication, since many draperies were borrowed from 
St. Mark’s, Venice, to cover, presumably, the still unpictured 


Fic. 17. Giotto. Lamentation over Christ. — Arena, Padua. 


parts of the walls. Giotto lived some four years in Padua, 
brought his family there, received the exiled poet Dante and 
with him joked not too decorously about his own ugliness and 
that of his children. It seems likely enough, though not cer- 
tain, that he followed the banished Pope to Avignon about 
1309, and spent some years in Southern France. What is 
certain is that he was again in Florence by 1312, and that, 
having found his own solution of the problem of mass in the 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 31 


Arena Chapel, he thereafter rested comfortably on his dis- 
covery, never was quite as strenuous again, and spent his 
later years at a new problem — that of decorative symmetry. 

The first experiment towards a sweeter and more complex 
style was made in the cross vaults 
of the Lower Church of Assisi, 
immediately above the tomb of 
St. Francis. The subjects were 
the three virtues of the Francis- 
can vow — Poverty, Chastity, 
and Obedience — with a St. 
Francis in a glory of angels. In 
these great triangular composi- 
tions, allegory and symbolism 
run riot, and we do well to recall 
Hazlitt’s shrewd remark on 
Spenser’s “Faery Queene” — 
“the allegory will not bite.” 
Indeed one might forget it for 
the radiance of the azures, moss- 
greens, rose pinks, and deeper 
violets, for the delightful con- 


trast of the freely composed 


Fic. 18. Giotto. Hope. — 
Arena, Padua. 


groups with the intricate geomet- 
rical formality of the rich bor- 
ders. Yet to ignore the allegory completely would be to forget 
the master’s intention. We may savor it best in the great com- 
position: St. Francis Marries his Lady Poverty, Figure 18a. The 
bridal group stands on a central crag, Christ serving as priest, 
St. Francis slipping a ring on the gaunt hand of a haggard, yet 
strangely fascinating bride clothed in a single ragged garment. 
Her bare feet show through a crisply drawn and blossomless rose 
tree. wo urchins at the foot of the little cliff stand ready to 
stone so unseemly a bride. From the central group to right 


a2 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


and left, earnest groups of angels spread in a descending curve. 
In the lower angle, left, a young man gives his rich cloak to an 
old beggar, while an angel points to the bridal: Poverty is 
accepted. At the lower right corner, another angel attempts 


Fic. 18a. Giotto. St. Francis’ Mystic Marriage with Poverty. 
— Lower Church, Assist. 


to detain a young man who passes with a gesture of contempt 
in the company of two portly priests: Poverty is rejected by 
such. From the apex of the great triangle, the hands of God 
descend to welcome two angels, one of which offers the cloak 
given to the beggar, and the other a model of the church which 
is the splendid covering for the body of the Saint. The fan- 
tastic beauty of this and its companion pieces can only be ap- 
preciated on the spot. No frescoes of Italy surpass these for 
loveliness of color and perfection of condition. It is the most 
beautiful pictured Gothic ceiling in the world, perhaps the 
most fantastically beautiful of all figured ceilings whatever. 

Because the figures are a little slight and the expression a 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 33 


bit sentimentalized, and the proportions rather arbitrarily 
handled to meet the exigencies of the curved spaces, many 
good critics, including Venturi and Berenson, deny these com- 
positions to Giotto. One of them, the St. Francis in Glory, is 
clearly of inferior design and quality. For the others, it seems 
to me that the designs can only be by Giotto, while the execu- 
tion is mostly by a charming assistant whose work in this ceiling 
and elsewhere in this church makes us wish we knew his name. 
No middle-aged painter of established repute was likely to 
undertake personally the dirty and fatiguing work of painting 
a ceiling in fresco. If we are right in supposing that Giotto 
may have designed this ceiling, shortly after his return from 
Avignon, say, after 1312, he would have been towards fifty 
years old, and provided with a shop-staff of well-trained assist- 
ants. From this time on, indeed, we may assume that he 
rather directed the work of others than painted himself. Such 
a view will permit us to accept as school works many fine pic- 
tures the design of which a too strict criticism has denied to 
Giotto. For example, the admirable Coronation of the Virgin, 
in Santa Croce, Florence, seems to me completely designed by 
Giotto, and the logical next step after the Franciscan allegories, 
though there can be little actual painting by the master on the 
panel, and his personal contribution may have been limited to 
a small working drawing. Indeed the only one of the later 
panels which seems to show throughout his actual handiwork 
is the lovely Dormition of the Virgin at Berlin, Frontispiece, 
which was painted for the Church of Ognissanti. 

At about this period I think we may set the several cruci- 
fixes in Florentine churches, without inquiring too narrowly 
whether they are by the master or by scholars. Giotto has de- 
veloped a singularly noble type. The Christ is no longer con- 
torted in agony as in the crucifixes by Cimabue. He is dead, 
with his head quietly sunk on the powerful breast, and the 
body relaxed. The conception is humanistic. One feels 


34 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


chiefly the pity of stretching that glorious thing that is a man’s 
body on a cross. Probably the earliest of these crucifixes is 
that at Santa Maria Novella, while the finest is at San Felice. 
About 1320 we may set the dismembered ancona, painted for 
Cardinal Gaetano Stefaneschi, 
which originally stood on the 
high altar of St. Peter’s, Rome. 
The tarnished fragments which 
you may still see in the sacristy, 
are more splendid in color than 
any other tempera painting 
whatsoever. Probably only the 
central panels, Christ and St. 
Peter enthroned, are from Giot- 
to’s hand, the side panels rep- 
ee Rem etree Iain oe resenting the martyrdom of Peter 
- St. John the Baptist. — Peruzzi and Paul may well be both de- 

Chapel, Santa Croce. . 
7 signed and executed by the 
accomplished assistant who carried out the allegories at Assisi. 

So far we have seen Giotto a wanderer. Assisi, Rome, 
Padua, Rimini, delighted to do him honor, but apparently 
Florence had claimed few works from his hand. We have 
record of frescoes in the Badia which may have been early 
works. It was the decoration of Arnolfo’s great Franciscan 
church of Santa Croce that finally recalled Giotto and evoked 
his most accomplished work. He completed in the transepts 
of Santa Croce four chapels and as many altar-pieces. The 
frescoes were white-washed in the 16th century, and the panels 
broken up and lost. But in the last century the white-wash 
was scraped off from two of the chapels, and there we may see, 
so far as defacement and repainting permit, the masterpieces 
of the early Florentine school. We may reasonably guess the 
date of this work to be somewhere about 1320, Giotto 
being nearly sixty. | 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM — 35 


In the chapel maintained by that noble family, the Peruzzi, 
Giotto spread on the side walls three stories from the life of 
St. John the Baptist, and as many more from that of St. John 
the Evangelist. The figures are superb, magisterial in pose; 


Fic. 20. Giotto. Resuscitation of Drusiana by St. John. — Peruzzi 
Chapel, Santa Croce. 


the draperies grand and ample after the classical fashion. 
Upon bulk and relief there is less insistence than at Padua. 
Giotto has passed the experimental stage as regards form, is 
less strenuous and more at his ease. - Nothing is more stately 
in the chapel than the presentation of the infant Baptist 
to his father, who is temporarily stricken with dumbness, 
Figure 19. Simeon gravely writes the name John; Elizabeth 
with her adoring group of attendants carefully offers the 
vivacious child to his father’s gaze. The gestures are slow, 
definite, determined. The group beautifully fills the square 
space without crowding it. The composition, unlike the 
widely spaced Paduan designs, is drawn together into a mass. 

Upon the Feast of Herod with Salome modestly dancing 
John Ruskin ™ has expended just eulogies in the petulant yet 


36 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


important little book “Mornings in Florence.” What is not- 
able in the scene is its general decorum and the pathetic inde- 
cision of the weak King. 

But the most accomplished design as such is the miracle of the 
Resuscitation of Drusiana by St. John the Evangelist, Figure 20. 
Even the inscenation before a fine Romanesque city is ade- 
quately, if very simply, realized. The gesture of the apostle is 
of majestic power, the contrast of the massive, upright, colum- 
nar forms of the elders, with the sharply bent forms of Drusiana, 
her mourners and bier bearers, is admirably invented, and the 
drastic portraiture of a cripple at the left adds a tang of reality 
while in no wise detracting from the dignity of the scene. 
We have a work in the grand style, massively conceived, 
warmly felt, wrought into an elaborate and satisfying sym- 
metry. The Ascension of St. John has an even graver and more 
ample rhythm. The Golden Age of Raphael and Titian will 
have little to add to this except the minor graces. 

In the adjoining chapel of the Bardi family, Giotto, a little 
later, I believe, painted six stories of St. Francis, and four 
figures of the great Franciscan saints, St. Louis of France, St. 
Louis of Toulouse, St. Clare, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. 
Over the entrance arch he set an animated picture of St. 
Francis receiving the stigmata, the wounds of the Saviour. 
Nearly thirty years earlier he had done this subject for the 
Church at Assisi, and in an altar-piece which has passed from 
Pisa to the Louvre. By comparing the rigid, angular figures 
of the earlier composition and their ill-adjusted accessories, 
with this easy and beautifully balanced arrangement, you may 
see how far Giotto had gone in the direction of grace, and you 
will not fail also to note how much more tragic the earlier and 
less calculated work is. 

For the first time, in the Bardi chapel, Giotto conceives the 
decoration of the side walls as a whole. From the pointed lu- 
nettes above, through the three compositions on each wall, 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM = 37 


there is an architectural axis, sometimes arbitrarily imposed, 
about which the figures are symmetrically distributed. Often 


Fic. 21. Giotto. St. Francis renounces his Father. Compare 
- Fic. 9.— Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce. 


the scene is a screen with projecting wings as in the St. Francis 
before the Sultan of Morocco, or a similar forecourt, as in the 
Mourning for St. Francis. It will be well to compare the story 
of St. Francis renouncing his father, Figure 21, with the same 
subject at Assisi. You will recall that St. Francis, when rebuked 
by his father for a rash and impulsive act of charity, stripped off 
his clothes, then threw them at his father’s feet, and took refuge 
under the robe of the Bishop of Assisi. In the earlier version 
the architectural background splits the composition in two, 
adding to its intensity perhaps, but displeasing to the eye. 
Here in the late version a fine building seen in perspective 
both unifies the two groups and serves as apex for the decora- 
tive axis of the entire side wall. 

More remarkable still is the contrast between St. Francis 
Braving the Fire Ordeal before the Soldan, Figure 22, as depicted 
at Assisi and Florence. We have to do not merely with an im- 


38 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


mense advance in decorative composition, the accessories at 
Assisi being trivial and fantastic; not merely with progress 
towards a gracious symmetry and more massive and impres- 
sive form, but also with a complete change of moral point of 
view. At Assisi the Soldan is an ogre exacting a cruel test. 
The Moslem priests are a cowardly pack of magicians ignobly 
slinking away, St. Francis a grim fanatic. At Florence the 
Soldan is a noble and humane gentleman, amazed at an un- 
reasonable ordeal forced upon his wise men. The Moslem doc- 
tors are splendid scholars grudgingly shrinking from an unfair 
test, St. Francis an alert little enthusiast half gloating over 
the confusion he has thrown into the enemy camp. With a by 
no means orthodox feeling, old Giotto, humanistic Giotto, 
almost seems to take, or at least to see, the pagans’ side of it. 
He who had written a manly poem against the excesses and 
hypocrisies of the Franciscan ideal of poverty, is now capable 
of criticizing the more extravagant propagandism of the saint 
himself. 

It is a criticism that admits all tenderness and sympathy, 
as may be seen in the famous fresco representing the Mourning 
over the body of St. Francis while his soul is translated to 
heaven, Figure 23. Again John Ruskin is your best inter- 
preter to this picture, which after all only needs to be seen. 
It combines all the qualities for which Giotto had striven— 
warmth, vivacity, ingenuity, unexpectedness in the narrative 
details; massiveness and dignity of the individual forms; and 
a decorative symmetry at once monumental, formal, and delight- 
fully varied. 

With this noble and deeply felt composition we virtually 
take leave of Giotto. For though he lived for many years 
yet, the works of his old age have largely perished. In the 
chapel at Assisi dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen are fine fres- 
coes in which he surely had a leading part. From 1330 to 1333 
he worked at Naples for King Robert of Anjou. Nothing re- 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM = 39 


Fic. 22. Giotto. St. Francis before the Soldan. Compare Fic. 11. 
— Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce. 


Fic. 23. Giotto. Death of St. Francis. — Bardi Chapel, Santa Croce. 


40 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


mains from this visit except certain shrewd jests which the 
painter exchanged with the King. In 1334 Florence recalled 
him, and made him capomaesiro of the Cathedral. Giotto 
designed the flower-like tower which rises lightly beside the 
temple of Our Lady of the 
_ Flower, invented and perhaps 
cut in marble certain reliefs on 
the base representing the crafts 
of men, but did not live to see 
the loveliest of bell towers 
finished. The task was com- 
pleted by his pupil and artistic 
executor, [addeo Gaddi. In the 
last years Giotto conceived vast 
compositions of a' religious and 
political sort for the public 
buildings of the Commune. 
Fic. 24. Giotto. “Dante, tracing here were allegories of a strong 
from the ruined fresco in the and weak state, in the Bargello, 
Bargello. : 
the prison-fortress of the Cap- 
tain of the People. These great symbolical designs are a kind 


of missing link between Giotto and the panoramic painters who 
followed him. We may find an echo of this lost work in the 
Civic Allegories in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. These 
were doing at the moment of Giotto’s death by a Sienese © 
painter, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, who had studied the great 
Florentine master devoutly. Nothing of Giotto’s latest phase 
is left save a few figures in the battered frescoes in the Bargello 
which contain the idealized portrait of youthful Dante, Fig- 
ure 24, and the gracious Dormition of the Virgin at Berlin, 
Frontispiece. | 

Just before Giotto died, the tyrant of Milan borrowed him 
from Florence. Giotto soon returned, to die early in the year 
1337, being seventy years old. Almost single-handed he had 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM — 41 


made Italian painting. He had lent life and warmth to the 
cold and academic reform of the Roman painters. He had 
expressed a maximum of feeling, without sacrifice of dignity. 
He had worked out beautiful and impressive forms of com- 
position wherein symmetry and contrast met harmoniously. 
He had mastered the expression of mass on a plane surface 
with a certainty and energy no artist before had even im- 
agined, and that few since have equalled. He had forecast and 
led the way in every manner of realistic figure painting. 
Florence, when true to herself, could only repeat Giotto in 
one phase or another of his activity. In her casual and sprightly 
mood, she carries on the method of Giotto’s stories of St. 
Francis at Assisi, in mystical reflection and symbolism she 
must build on the allegories over St. Francis’ tomb and on the 
lost political frescoes; in her mood of strenuous search for re- 
ality she can but repeat the Paduan chapter of Giotto’s striv- 
ings, in rare moments of vision and fulfilment she will merely 
begin where the Santa Croce frescoes of Giotto ended. 
However Giotto be ranked, and personally I see no greater 
artist on the rolls of history, his 1s indisputably the greatest 
single achievement; for no other artist who accomplished so 
much began with so little. It was no exaggeration that made 
Lorenzo Ghiberti regard the advent of Giotto as the coming to 
life of an art that had been buried for centuries. It is indeed 
the measured classicism of Giotto’s art that constitutes its 
greatness — its sweet and lucid reasonableness, its rugged yet 
disciplined strength. Seneca or Marcus Aurelius would have 
understood it perfectly, as Giotto himself, for his mellow wis- 
dom and wit, would have been a welcome visitor at Horace’s 
Sabine farm. In his broad and flexible insight, his love of 
mankind, his clear perceptions of aims and ready acceptance 
of limitations, in his pathos without exaggeration, in his con- 
structive skill without ostentation, in his simplicity without 
bareness, he is the authentic and indispensable link between 


42 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the beauty of Greece and Rome and that of the Italian Golden 
Age. To know him is to know almost everything that is need- 
ful about older European painting, not to know him is to lack 
the very rudiments of an artistic education. 


Giotto left many followers,” not one of whom at all under- 
stood his greatness. Like his friend Dante, he was distantly 
admired, but really loved only in bits. As perceptive a person 
as the artist biographer Vasari lavishes praise upon Giotto for 
his more trivial inventions —the Christ Child struggling out 
of the arms of the High Priest, for example. So Giotto’s fol- 
lowers picked unintelligently from his great accomplishment, 
choosing what the master himself would least have valued— 
his simple contours without his significant mass, his variety 
and vivacity without his warmth and restraint. On their own 
account they added complication. ‘The sparse economy of 
Giotto’s best work could never have appealed to Florence at 
large. Something richer and gayer was wanted, more like 
Florentine life itself as it became after the general loosening 
up of manners and morals following the plague of 1348. Its 
chronicler, the author of the “Decameron,” fairly represents 
the new spirit. The best of the younger painters have indeed 
something of Boccaccio’s mentality —his light touch, his 
charm, his panoramic richness, his fluid and undisciplined 
grace. Thus arises what I may call the panoramic style of 
fresco painting— superficial, full of episodes and accessories, 
still religious in theme, but mundane in spirit, often cleverly 
conceived, and very superficially felt. These artists had 
grasped neither the meaning of Giotto’s drawing nor the 
beauty of his decorative formulas, they saw only his variety 
and energy. Meanwhile a great Sienese painter, Ambrogio 
Lorenzetti, a profound admirer of Giotto, had worked out a 
nobly spectacular form of painting in which the stage setting 
was elaborate and realistic. He painted much in Florence 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM — 43 


about 1334 and his novelties allured the new men. So we find 
fresco painting tending in a scenic direction, and panel painting 
following the same course more conservatively — not merely 
in Florence and Siena, but throughout Northern Italy ‘as well. 


Fic. 25. Giotto’s Assistant at Assisi. Flight into Egypt. Compare 
Figure 14.— Lower Church, Assist. 


Many of Giotto’s immediate pupils are mere names to us. 
Maso, whom the sculptor commentator Ghiberti praised for 
his sweetness, Stefano whom he dubbed the “ape of nature,” 
Puccio Capanna — their work must be at Assisi, but criticism 
has not succeeded in clearly disengaging it. The nameless 
master who executed the Franciscan allegories at Assisi and 
designed the stories of Christ’s youthful days, in the adjoining 
right transept, is the most accomplished and individual fol- 
lower of Giotto. He works for grace, pathos, sumptuousness, 
and decorative breadth. He is a Giotto with the angles rubbed 
down. By comparing Giotto’s Flight of the Holy Family to 


44 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Egypt, with the later version at Assisi, Figure 25, we may grasp 
the difference between master and scholar. Giotto is brusque, 
harsh, noble; the flight through a rocky defile gives a sense 
of urgency and peril; the composition carries forward like the 


Fic. 26. Taddeo Gaddi. St. Joachim Meets St. Anna. Compare 
Fic. 13a. — Baroncelli Chapel, Santa Croce. 


ram of a battleship. In the version at Assisi the flight has 
become an attractive family excursion through a romantic 
valley; the mood is gentle, charming, unspecific. A moment 
in an epic has been attenuated into an idyl. ‘This master 
never fails to express a dreamy sort of poetry, and in such 
compositions as the Massacre of the Innocents, and the Cal- 
vary, he commands a genuine pathos. He is exactly what 
Giotto might have been, had he skipped the strenuous Paduan 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM $45 


phase, and become a decorator without the preliminary disci- 
pline of the draughtsman. ‘There are reasons for thinking that 
this work was done by a shop assistant of Giotto’s, who for 
many years directed the decoration of the Lower Church at 
Assisi in Giotto’s stead. Some of the work in the Childhood 
of Christ, I believe, may be as late as 1330 to 1335. 

Taddeo Gaddi is a more definite and less pleasing person- 
ality. He was Giotto’s godson and his assistant for twenty- 
four years, presumably from 1313 to 1337, as well as his 
artistic executor. Whether in panel or fresco, he was an admitr- 
able craftsman; in tempera, a fine colorist. His panels are 
widely scattered, some ten being in the United States; his 
frescoes, all that we need to note, are in Santa Croce. In the 
Baroncelli Chapel, just after Giotto’s death, Taddeo finished 
these frescoes of the early life of the Virgin, repeating 
themes which Giotto had used both in Padua and elsewhere 
in Santa Croce itself. His way of competing with Giotto is to 
stir and add and mix things up. Compare the meeting of Anna 
and Joachim at the Beautiful Gate in the two masters; Giotto 
at Padua is grave, noble, heartfelt; how he discriminates 
between the masculine clutch of the oJld husband and the 
tender embrace of the wife — how drastic the conception is, 
but also how clear and stately. Poor Taddeo on the other 
hand brings the sacred pair together with the bounce of amodern 
dance, Figure 26. He brings no brains to bear, and almost no 
feelings, just a sprightly and wholly casual inventiveness. Cer- 
tain delightful little panels with stories of Christ and St. Francis 
which he did in Giotto’s shop for the doors of the sacristy 
wardrobes of Santa Croce remind us of the pity that he ever 
ceased to be an interpreter of a greater man’s designs. In 
the fresco of Job’s trials, in the Campo Santo, Pisa, he seems 
nearly a great artist. Conceivably he worked on designs of 
his late master. At least he had a certain critical sense, for 
at an artist’s reunion at San Miniato, about 1360, he told 


46 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Andrea Orcagna and the rest of the company that painting 
had constantly declined since Giotto and was declining every 
day. He transmitted his sound craftsmanship toason, Agnolo, 
who decorated the Choir of Santa Croce with the legends of 
the Cross. He carried down the 
panoramic style to the end of 
the 14th century, practicing it 
with more taste than his father, 
achieving a grace without much 
inwardness or force. 

A later contemporary of 
Giotto’s, Buonamico  Buffal- 
macco,!®= seems to have inherited 
something of Giotto’s power, 
but the identification of his work 
is very uncertain, and he lives 
for us chiefly as an egregious 
wag in the pages of the Italian 


story writers. 
Fic. 27. Giottino. _ Deposition. From another contemporary 
— Uffizi. : . 
and possibly a_ scholar’ of 
Giotto, Bernardo Daddi, we have many panel pictures and a 
few frescoes at Santa Croce. He is an admirable craftsman, 
and a sincere illustrator, within his limitations, applying very 
competently to panel painting something of the panoramic 
realism of Ambrogio Lorenzetti. A prolific artist, his exqui- 
sitely finished little panels are quite common. In America 
are good examples in the New York Historical Society, in the 
Platt Collection, Englewood, and a more monumental piece 
in the Johnson Collection, Philadelphia. He lived well beyond 
the middle of the century. 
Giottino, who possibly is to be identified with Giotto’s pupil 
Maso, is a more delicate spirit with unusual resources of pathos. 
His best work is an altar-piece of the Deposition, Figure 27, 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM — 47 


painted about 1360 for the Church of San Remigio at Florence 
and now in the Uffizi. A preference for isolated figures and for 
vertical lines is noteworthy, as is the wistfulness of the 
attendant donors. Similar qualities of delicate precision as 


Fic. 28. Andrea Orcagna. Christ conferring authority upon St. Peter 
and St. Thomas Aquinas. — Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella. 


of dispersion are in the frescoes in Santa Croce which repre- 
sent the Miracles of Pope Sylvester. The note is feminine 
and rather Sienese than genuinely Florentine. 

Outside of Giotto’s bottega arose the rare continuers of his 
tradition. Such an artist flourished about the middle of the 
century in the person of Andrea di Cione, better known by 
his nickname of Orcagna. He was more of a sculptor and 
architect than a painter, a man of dignity and force, a poet 
and thinker. Although not a pupil of Giotto, he studied that 
master’s work admiringly, and sought to reproduce its mas- 
-siveness. Its brusqueness he largely rejected. Instead of 
sketching the draperies summarily, he drew the folds care- 


48 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


fully after the model; he liked to treat the panel and wall as 
a whole, where Giotto had accepted the tradition of subdivi- 
sion; he gave to his faces a greater sweetness and he occasion- 
ally attempted foreshortenings and impetuousities of gesture 
that Giotto would have avoided. Unluckily Orcagna’s most 
important frescoes have perished. We may grasp his nobility 
in the altar-piece which he finished and dated in 1357, Figure 28, 
for the chapel of the Strozzi family at Santa Maria Novella. 
The formality of the composition is noteworthy, as is the stately 
sweetness of the Madonna. The subject is Christ delegating 
his Power and Wisdom respectively to St. Peter and to St. 
Thomas Aquinas. 

In the same chapel the figure of Christ leaning forward over 
a cloud and making the sublime gesture that decrees the end 
of the world and the Judgment Day, Figure 29, 1s probably 
designed by Orcagna, as are the larger figures below. We have 
here one of the freest and grandest conceptions of the period. 
The lovely garden-like heaven and the quaint and ingenious hell 
on the side walls are by Orcagna’s brother, Nardo di Cione. The 
mood is less grave than Orcagna’s, variety counts for more. 
The heads of the saints are of a most delicate beauty. Nardo 
has many of the qualities of the panoramic painters without their 
heedlessness. He represents a compromise between the severity 
of Giotto and the diffuseness of his own day. He worked in- 
defatigably until 1366, and his younger brother, Jacopo, and 
his imitator, Mariotto, continued the manner almost into the 
new century. 

Orcagna was perhaps more versatile than critics have sup- 
posed. Recently discovered fragments of frescoes in Santa 
Croce, Figure 30, show a drastic power that no other Florentine 
possessed. ‘The theme is miserable folk in time of pestilence 
crying out to Death to end their sorrows. The entire fresco 
would have shown Death passing them by and poising the 
scythe for prosperous and happy folk beyond. The whole scene 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 49 


Fic. 30. Andrea Orcagna. They call Death in Vain. Fragment 
from ruined fresco of the Triumph of Death. — Santa Croce. 


Fic. 29. Andrea Orcagna. Upper part of Fresco of Last Judgment. 
— Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella. 


50 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


exists in the famous frescoes of the Pisan Campo Santo which, 
while traditionally ascribed to Orcagna, are unquestionably of 
Sienese inspiration. They will occupy us later. Orcagna’s soli- 

‘Florence reminds us that artistic succession 


tary ‘position: in, 
is rarely frorn master to pupil, but from great soul to great 
soul agross intervening mediocrity. 

Giorgio Vasari regarded Gherardo Starnina (active yi 
1400) as an important link between Giotto and the Renais- 
sance, and if Professor Suida is right in ascribing the frescoes 
of the legend of St. Nicholas in the Castellani Chapel, Santa 
Croce, to Starnina, Vasari was quite right. About this mys- 
terious pupil of Antonio Veneziano who worked in Spain, we 
really know almost nothing. But the St. Nicholas frescoes 
have a grimness and gravity which points back to Giotto and 
withal a careful fusion of light and shade which anticipates 
Masolino and Masaccio. Meanwhile Giotto’s own great com- 
positions in still undiminished splendor and impressiveness 
stood ready to give lessons to the eye and mind that could read 
them aright. Before such later panoramists as Niccoléd di 
Pietro Gerini, Mariotto di Nardo, and Spinello Aretino were 
gone, that eye was already busy, in the person of a rugged 
little boy of San Giovanni in Valdarno. He may have already 
been called Masaccio for his untidiness. He was to rebuild 
on Giotto and create the grand style of the Renaissance. 

A mere catalogue of those painters who pursued the pano- 
ramic method with ability can hardly be expected. One and 
all they followed the Sienése narrative style. Prominent would 
be certain incomers from other cities, Giovanni da Milano, 
Antonio Veneziano, and Spinello Aretino. These are typical 
decorators of the last quarter of the 14th century. 

We do better to fix our attention upon the most remarkable 
example of the Florentine panoramic style, the decoration of 
the Spanish Chapel, the chapter house attached to the Do- 
minican Church of Santa Maria Novella The work 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM — 51 


was begun by Andrea Bonaiuti in the year 1365, as we 
know from a recently discovered document. As decoration it 
is delightful, if rather superficially so. ‘The artist treats his 


Fic. 31. Andrea Bonaiuti, The Navicella, fresco, closely imitated 
from Giotto’s Mosaic at St. Peter’s, Rome. — Spanish Chapel. 
spaces as wholes, declining to cut them up into oblongs after 
the earlier fashion. He covers his great surfaces with ease and 
taste, has a knack at illustration, and a fine sense of color. The 
great Calvary over the triumphal arch imposes from its very 
vastness; the triangles of the cross vault, including a spirited 


52 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


transcript of Giotto’s Navicella, Figure 31, are composed with 
clarity and skill; the famous composition of the Dominican theo- 
logian, St. Thomas Aquinas, enthroned above the Liberal 
Arts and Sciences, and their representatives in history, com- 
bines an almost Byzantine formality and grandeur with 
prettiness and ingenuity in details. But the method is better 
shown in the decoration opposite, which represents the dual 
earthly powers, the Pope and the Emperor, enthroned equally, 
and supported by the representatives of the spiritual orders 
and secular estates, Figure 32. “The group which symbolizes the 
right government of society, according to medizval ideas, is set 
before a church which quite faithfully shows what the Cathe- 
dral of Florence was then intended to be. High up in the 
arch is the goal of all earthly endeavor — Heaven with Christ 
enthroned amid the angels; an altar with a lamb before Him, 
symbolizing His sacrifice; His Mother kneeling as intercessor 
for mankind. The Gate of Heaven with St. Peter in attend- 
ance, is naively set above the church on a sort of aerial raft. 
Below is a novel realistic touch, the villa-studded sky line of 
hills which encloses Florence. The real guide to St. Peter’s 
presence is always a Dominican monk, usually St. Dominic 
himself is intended — the founder and militant evangelist of 
the order, as St. Thomas Aquinas was its systematic theolo- 
gian. In the lower range of the picture, St. Dominic confutes 
the heretics, who tear their wicked books in despair. Above 
he vainly beseeches careless gentlefolk at dalliance in an orange 
grove; still higher, he leads the truly penitent to Heaven’s gate. 
At the foot the Domini Canes (a bad pun for Dominicans) 
are vigilant. The moral of the fresco is, happy the world 
which trusts its worldly and religious business to the Emperor 
and the Pope, and its personal religious problems to the Do- 
minicans. It is a kind of glorified poster for the order. 

In its sprightliness, variety, complication and facile charm, 
it is a fine example of the panoramic style. It lacks every 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 53 


quality of seriousness whether as a composition or in the 
drawing of the figures. But its fairy-tale profuseness and ease 
have made it ever since it was painted, one of the most popular 
decorations in Italy. Its success shows the kind of taste with 


Fic. 32. Andrea Bonaiuti. Dominican Allegory of Church and State. 
Fresco. — Spanish Chapel. 


which the few disciplined artists of the fourteenth century had 
to contend. Such obstacles have ever been the fate of the artist 
who cares enough for his art to practice it austerely. 

Work of the facile and superficial character of the Spanish 
Chapel Florence produced in abundance for two generations 
after Giotto’s death. His faithful but dull disciple, Taddeo 
Gaddi, as we have seen, gloomily foresaw the downfall of the 
art of painting. But as in a great personality the recreations 


54 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


and even dissipations seldom permanently eclipse the greater 
purpose, so Florence was big enough to indulge for a time her 
weaker side. Had Taddeo Gaddi been more intelligent, or 
even more hopeful, he would have seen that new masters must 
arise, and that there would soon be pictures in Florence at 
which Giotto come back to earth would gaze with that humility 
with which he had once viewed the marble gods of Rome, 
with that understanding sympathy which he had borne to 
all his fellow mortals. 


ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER I 


On THE DIGNITY AND WEALTH OF OLD FLORENCE 


Giovanni Villani, Historie, XII, 4, regrets the passing of decorum with 
the advent of the French and the Duke of Athens in 1342, but wealth 
increased. 

‘Formerly the clothing and costumes [of the Florentines] was the 
most beautiful, noble and distinguished of any nation, in the manner 
of the togaed Romans.” Evidently the look of things favored the art 
of a Giotto. | } ) 

In book XI, ch. 91-03, Villani gives remarkable and quite modern 
statistics which I paraphrase and quote, in part from the Giunta edi- 
tion, Venice, 1559. The time is about 1340. 

‘‘We found by diligence that in these times there were in Florence 
25,000 men fit to bear arms, from 15 to 70 years old, among whom there 
were 1506 nobles . . . There were then in Florence 65 fully equipped 
knights, though before the middle class which now rules was organized, 
there were more than 250 knights... There was estimated to be 
90,000 . . .. men, women and children in the city. There is supposed 
to be generally in the city 1,500 foreigners, travellers, and soldiers not 
counting in the population the clergy, monks, and nuns... In the 
outlying districts are supposed to be 80,000 people. We have found 
from the rector who baptizes the children (since for every male who 
was baptized in San Giovanni—in order to have the count — was 
dropped a black bean, and for every female a white) that for every 
year in these times there were from 5,800 to 6,000, the males generally 
exceeding by 300 to 500 a year. 

‘“‘We find that the boys and girls at [primary ] school were from 8,000 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM — 55 


to 10,000. The boys who study the abacus (calculation) and arabic 
numbers, in six schools, from 1,000 to 1,200. And those who are learn- 
ing [ Latin] grammar and logic, in four great schools, from 550 to 600. 

“The churches, which were then in Florence and in the suburbs, 
counting the abbeys, and monastic churches, we find to be 110, of which 
57, parish churches . . . 5 abbeys and two priories with 80 monks, 24 
convents of nuns, with more than 500 women, ro friaries with more 
than 700 friars, 30 hospitals with more than 1000 beds to lodge 
the poor and infirm, and from 250 to 300 chaplain priests. 

“The shops of the cloth makers (arte della lana) were 200 and more, 
and they made from 70,000 to 80,000 bolts, at a value of more than 
1,200,000 gold florins, although fully a third part staid in the city for 
the workers, without gain for the cloth handlers, and the workers 
are more than 30,000 persons. . 

“The warehouses of the art of the Calimala, for the French and trans- 
alpine cloth, were 20, which brought in per year more than 10,000 bolts 
of a value of 300,000 gold florins, all of which was sold in Florence. . . 

Banks of money changers 80 . . . Shops of bootmakers . . . 300. 
The college of judges, from 80 td 100. And notaries from 600 up, doc- 
tors of physic and surgery 60, and druggists’ shops Ioo. .. . 

“The greater part of the well-to-do, rich, and noble citizens with 
their families, staid in the country for four months, and some, more, 
ayear.. 

“Other dignities and magnificences of our city of Florence I should 
not fail to bring to memory, for information of such as shall come after 
us. It was, within, well built with many beautiful palaces and houses, 
and in these times they were continually demolishing, thus bettering 
the building by making it more comfortable and rich, bringing in from 
outside the examples for every sort of betterment and beauty. Churches, 
cathedrals, friaries of every rule, monasteries, magnificent and rich. 
Furthermore, there was no citizen who did not have a country place, 
great.or small, which was not richly built, indeed far greater buildings 
than in the city; and every citizen sinned by inordinate spending, 
whence they were thought crazy. But it was so magnificent a thing to 
see, that a foreigner, not used to coming in, believed, because of the 
rich structures for three miles about, that it was all one city after the 
manner of Rome, not to mention the rich palaces, towers, court yards, 
terraced gardens, still further from the city, which in any other country 
would have been called the rural districts. In short one would have 
thought that within six miles of the city were more rich and noble in- 


56 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


habitants, than, taking them together, two Florences could have pro- 
duced. And let this suffice for telling of the facts of Florence.” 


GIOTTO’S VIEW OF FRANCISCAN POVERTY 


Giotto’s humanistic detachment from the Franciscan doctrine of 
voluntary poverty is well illustrated in his poem which is quoted in part 
from Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s translation. The original is in G. 
Milanesis’ edition of Vasari, Le Vite, Vol. I, Florence 1878, pp. 426-8. 


‘Many there are, praisers of Poverty; 

The which as man’s best state is register’d 
When by free choice preferr’d, 

With strict observance, having nothing here. 

For this they find certain authority 

Wrought of an over-nice interpreting. 
Now as concerns such thing, 

A hard extreme to me it doth appear, 
Which to commend I fear, 

For seldom are extremes without some vice, 
Let every edifice, 

Of work or word, secure foundation find; 
Against the potent wind, 

And all things perilous, so well prepared — 

That it needs no correction afterward.” 


A CONTRACT WITH ORCAGNA FOR THE ALTAR-PIECE OF 1357 


Tommaso di Rossello Strozzi left a rough note of the terms of the 
contract for the altar-piece of his chapel. Doubtless the actual contract 
was much fuller. The minute is published by Filippo Baldinucci, Ofere, 
Milano 1811, Vol IV. p. 397. 

‘“‘Herewith is to be written [on my part] and Andrea called Orcagna 
that I Tommaso di Rossello aforesaid have given to paint for the altar- 
piece which is made for the altar of [ the chapel ] in Santa Maria Novella, 
of a breadth of five braccia, 1 sol. [over 10 feet | there or thereabouts. 
The aforesaid Andrea is to paint in fine and splendid colors; and gold, 
silver and everything else are truly to be used in the entire panel and 
pinnacles, that is [yold] leaf. Only in the side columns may silver 
be used... And jwith] as many figures as [directed] by me 
Tommaso it shall be completed. And the said panel to be entirely 
painted by his own hand. 

“C1] 354 in twenty months.... 


GIOTTO AND FLORENTINE HUMANISM 57 


“Should it come about that the aforesaid Andrea should not give it 
to us completed and painted.” 

“He should pay me for every additional week that he works at the 
painting as it shall seem right to the judgment of the here named arbi- 
Eratorsss-, ... 

“Should it come to more than the aforesaid price, we will take the 
judgment of Carlo, Paolo and Fra Jacopo.” 

‘Such is approximately the sense of this very difficult and quite gram- 
marless annotation of Tommaso Strozzi. The arbitrators must have had 
occasion to act, for the panel is dated 1357, two years after the prom- 
ised time. 


Madonna of San Francesco. 


Ambrogio Lorenzetti. 


Fic. 33. 


Cuapter II 


SIENA AND THE CONTINUING OF THE MEDIEVAL 
STYLE 


On the Romantic instability of Siena — Fidelity to Byzantine Ideals — 
Guido, Coppo, the Master of the Altar-front of St. Peter — Duccio and 
his great Majesty of the Madonna — His two-fold tendency: to 
elaborated staged narrative; to sparse and exquisite decoration — Simone 
Martini and the Idealistic chivalric style—The Brothers Lorenzetti 
and the popular panoramic style — Second half of the Fourteenth 
Century — The Fifteenth Century: Sassetta and Giovanni de Paolo — 
Matteo, Benvenuto and Neroccio — The Renaissance and the downfall 
of the School, Francesco di Giorgio, Sodoma. 


As you enter Siena by the wide Camollia gate you will read 
in Latin ‘‘Siena opens her Heart still wider to thee”: — Cor 
magis tibt Sena pandit. Thus Siena avows herself the city of 
the heart. Where Florence studied and calculated, she mused 
and dreamed; where Florence was solid, she was volatile. 
For unrewarding idealisms she had a kind of genius. Long 
after the other Italian communes had seen it was worst pos- 
sible business to support the emperor, Siena was faithful to 
that lost cause. Every few years she changed her form of 
government, and seldom for the better. Merrymaking and 
pageantry were universal in old Italy, but Siena alone had a 
Spendthrift Club (Brigata Spendereccia) devoted to continual 
pleasure, and a poet, Folgore da San Gemignano, to celebrate 
its gaieties. Siena was ardent in inconstant fashion. Early 
in the 14th century was found a nude marble Venus so beautiful 
that it was set up in the great square and thronged with ad- 

59 


60 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


mirers. Then the war with Florence went badly, and at 
a few words from a pious fanatic, the citizenry smashed up 
the image and secretly buried the bits on Florentine soil to 
bring bad luck to the foe. Naturally no bad luck ensued to 
Florence, but Siena had enjoyed two delightful emotional 
crises. You will see why Siena never could produce a realistic 
art, any more than Ireland has produced one. Her eye was 
not on the object but on her own state of mind. Thus Florence 
will produce historians, scientists, and politicians, while Siena 
will produce saints and miracles. 

Amid this romantic inconstancy, the continuing thread 
was the cult of the Blessed Virgin. No other city thought 
so delicately of her, and no other art has represented her so 
ideally. Had she not saved the city? In 1259 the Florentine 
Guelfs and their allies marched with overwhelming force to 
the very gates of Siena. Ruin was imminent and despair 
abroad, when by a common impulse the populace marched 
penitently to the Cathedral and before the rude picture of 
the Queen of Heaven solemnly committed the city into her 
hands. In ecstacy of renewed faith the inferior army of Siena 
fell upon the invaders at Montaperti and utterly routed them. 
In gratitude Siena remained the city of the Virgin. When in 
1310 the painter Duccio replaced the rude effigy of the 
Madonna of Victory with one of the finest Madonnas known to 
art, Fig. 37, the whole city suspended business and escorted 
the picture from the studio to the Cathedral with hymns and 
litanies in honor of their divine patroness. 

Nowhere else has painting paid such homage to the Virgin 
Mary. Inother cities it was enough to represent her enthroned 
with a handful of angels or saints in attendance. The Sienese 
painters multiplied the celestial escort until it became a heav- 
enly court over which the Mother of God presides in sweet 
majesty. Siena also grasped at the then not quite orthodox sub- 
ject of the Assumption of the Virgin into Heaven. You see 


SIENA AND MEDIEVAL STYLE 61 


her slender form rising amid a glory of angels more than a 
hundred years before the theme was common elsewhere. 

These brief hints will tell of the temper of Siena. You will 
not expect such a city to be like Florence, interested in facts 
and charmed by the human 
spectacle. She will be rather 
engrossed with the beauty of 
old legends and in rare forward- 
looking moments concerned with 
her own devout imaginings. 
She will not wish the saints to 
be like the people one knows, 
but like denizens of some divine, 
far-off fairyland. Her painting 
will not be humanistic but of an 
unworldly idealism. 

Such being the temper of 
Siena, her artists, unlike those 
of Florence, had no quarrel with 


the Byzantine style. Its splen- 
did irreality only needed to be Fic. 34. Guido of Siena. 
made flexible and gracious. Madonna. — Accademia, Florence. 
Siena has really no new ideas to express, merely feelings 
more tender and exquisite. Her pictorial reforms are reverent 
and gradual, backward-looking, medieval. Her art from 1300 
to 1500, as lovely within its narrow limits as the closed garden 
of the Virgin, has the great interest of teaching us what ca- 
pacities for growth lay in the medieval tradition itself — what 
painting in Italy would have been had Siena exercised her 
temporary might after Montaperti and razed Florence five 
years before Giotto was born. 

A little earlier than the year 1225, when Florence called 
in strangers to adorn the Baptistery with mosaics in the 
Greek style, Guido of Siena signed and dated 1221 the most 


62 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


famous of his madonnas. Unhappily the enthroned Virgin 
of the Palazzo Pubblico was repainted some fifty years later, 
a fact which has led many critics unnecessarily to doubt the 
date! But from half a dozen. other pictures by Guido 


Fic. 35. Sienese about 1275. Altar-front of St. Peter. — Siena. 


we may learn that he was a diligent and rather heavy-handed 
imitator of the current Greek formulas, Figure 34. At the 
battle of Montaperti the Sienese captured an excellent Flor- 
entine painter, Coppo di Marcovaldo, and in 1261 he painted 
the admirable madonna which is still in the church of the Servi. 
It shows a sensitive use of the Byzantine conventions. There 
is pensiveness and almost shyness in the face and posture of 
the Virgin, and loving intentness in that of the Child. Their 
relation is to each other and not as in earlier madonnas to the 
devout public. These intimate qualities have been ascribed, 
I think wrongly, to restoration. But they appear even more 
emphatically in the entirely unrestored Madonna, Figure 3, 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE 63 


in the collection of Mr. Otto Kahn, which I think may be a 
Coppo”, and is in any case of similar date and feeling. 

The same process of sweetening the old style while accepting 
it, is shown in the famous altar-piece of St. Peter in the Acad- 
emy at Siena, Figure 35. The gaunt 
figure of the Saint is completely tra- 
ditional, the little stories of the An- 
nunciation and Nativity at the side 
show a new vivacity and a new grace. 
Siena met the innovating painter 
more than half way, for the indignant 
citizens soon marred with their knives _ 
the crucifiers of the head of the 
Christian Church. The date of the 
panel will not be far from 1275, and 
alréady the painter of genius who was 


to create the sweet, new style was 
learning his trade. 


Fic. 36. Duccio. Ruccellai 


Of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the Madonna.—Santa Maria 
Novella, Florence. 


father of the Sienese school, and 
everything considered its greatest master, we have numer- 
ous records,? and by no means all to his credit. He must 
have had the artistic temperament in a degree then unusual. 
The court records show half a dozen fines against him, and 
he was not scrupulous about paying his debts. One forgets 
these foibles before those Madonnas which are a consummate 
expression of taste and those narratives which are a triumph 
of tact and-ingenuity. Duccio’s mind does not grasp the 
harsher and more heroic emotions, but within the realm of 
the tender and pathetic he is supreme. His elegance appears 
in his first important work, the famous Rucella1 Madonna, 
Figure 36, in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, which tradi- 
tion erroneously ascribes to Cimabue. It is presumably 


64 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the great panel which Duccio contracted to paint in 1285.4 
He was probably young and unconsidered, for he took all 
the risks, agreeing that the picture might be rejected at the 
will of the patrons. The Society of Saint Mary the Virgin 


Fic. 37. Duccio. Madonna in Majesty. — Opera del Duomo, Siena. 


would have been foolish indeed to reject the most gracious 
Madonna the world had then seen. Characteristic of Duccio 
are the swaying curves of the contours and especially of the 
draperies, the thin, delicately folded robes of the Child and 
the attendant angels and the sensitively drawn bare feet. 
Working in Florence and doubtless impressed by Cimabue, 
Duccio has retained in this early work a certain austerity 
which gives way in his later work to a more feminine sweet- 
ness. For that very reason the Rucellai Madonna is perhaps 
the greatest Madonna of the century, since without loss of 
the stately Byzantine qualities, she gains the new attributes 
of grace. It was no wonder that when the name of Duccio 
had faded out of the Florentine memory, Florence ascribed 
this noble Madonna to the venerated founder of her native 
school, Cimabue. Recent criticism has righted the uncon- 
scious wrong thus done to Siena. , 


SIENA AND MEDIAEVAL STYLE 65 


To mature his style Duccio needed only to intensify the 
qualities of sweetness and grace which are evident already in 
the Rucellai Madonna. The stages of his growth are repre- 
sented in minor works at Siena and in British and Roman 
collections. But his fame, for the layman, is associated with 
the magnificent altar-piece which he executed for the Cathedral 
of Siena, and only the special student need look beyond it. 
On the gth of October, 1309, Duccio contracted with the 
trustees of the Cathedral to do a great altar-piece wholly with 
his own hands, at the rate of sixteen soldi a day and expenses. 
He promised to take no other work during the painting. It 
was finished in June of 1311 and carried in solemn procession 
from the bottega outside the Porta a Stalloreggi to the 
Cathedral. A chronicler describes the cortege “parading about 
the Campo, as is usual, all the bells pealing a glory in devotion 
for so noble a picture as this is... And all that day they kept 
praying with many alms which were given to poor folk, pray- 
ing to God and His Mother, who is our advocate, that she 
defend us in her infinite mercy from every adversity and 
every ill, and save us from the hands of traitors and foes of 
Siena.” Most characteristic of the febrile patriotism of Siena 
is this constant dread of the traitor. 

About a year before this ceremony the trustees enlarged 
the scheme for the picture, making an additional contract for 
thirty-eight stories to be paid at the rate of two florins and a 
half each. These were put on the back of the altar-piece, 
covering very fully the life of Christ and that of the Virgin. 
Thus the front of the altar-piece represents the decorative 
and monumental ideals of Sienese painting while the back 
exemplifies its feeling for narrative. Everything that Sienese 
painting was to be is already in germ in this marvellous work. 

In depicting the Virgin ‘‘in Majesty,” Figure 37, Duccio 
has magnified the theme. Earlier pictures show only a hand- 
ful of angels in attendance. Here we have a cloud of celestial 


66 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


witnesses, the four patrons of Siena kneeling in the foreground, 
at the sides charming alternation of grim, bearded evangelists, 
orientally soft girl martyrs, and youthful archangels. Seven 
years earlier Cimabue had conceived a similar great Majesty 
for the Church of Santa Chiara at Pisa.6 Doubtless Duccio 
had seen it, and, though it is lost to us, we may assume, that 
the Sienese artist outdid his prototype both in sweetness and 
splendor. 

In many ways Duccio’s Majesty is highly traditional. It 
shows the Byzantine horror of voids, is a little crowded. But 
this defect would be less apparent if it were raised on its histor- 
lated base (predella) with its original pinnacles above. Every- 
thing derives from Byzantine exemplars, reverently improved 
in a realistic direction. Duccio has dared to paint the Christ 
as a laddie; and not as a little old man; he has shown the 
soft forms of His body through light draperies; he has kept 
the austerity of the Byzantine apostles but has attenuated 
their harshness; he has worked the insipid female masks of 
the older art into forms of a positive and dreamy grace. One 
feels the tender mood of the work in the Latin jingle at the 
foot of the throne, typical of dozens of similar dedications in 


Siena: 
Mater Sancta Dei 
Sis caussa Senis requel 
Sis Duccio vita 
Te quia pinxit ita 


which I may rudely paraphrase: 


Holy Mother of God: grant Siena rest, 
Grant life to Duccio, — he did his best. 


All the sensibility of the City of the Virgin is in these prattling 
_ rhymes with which they loved to hallow and offer great pic- 
tures. | 

If the front of this panel shows only moderate innovations, 


SIENA AND MEDIZAVAL STYLE 67 


the case is not so for the back. The two score stories from the 
Bible or early Christian legend, in the distribution of the 
figures follow faithfully the standard Italo-Byzantine compo- 
sitions. Where Duccio steps in is in bettering the forms, 


Fic. 38. Duccio. Entry into Jerusalem; Christ Washing the Apostles’ Feet; 
Last Supper. From the back of the great Madonna. — Opera del Duomo, , 
Siena. 


giving grace to the draperies, and animation to the gestures — 
above all in providing contemporary architectural accessories, 
and coping with the problem of space. He also carries to 
their ultimate refinement certain decorative formulas which 
the Byzantine painters had glimpsed but not fully realized. 
Thus two quite opposed tendencies pass into Sienese painting 
from Duccio; — a rather small preoccupation with accessories: 
and the problem of space, and a pure zstheticism concerned’ 


68 HISTORY OF ITALIAN. PAINTING 


with finesses of decorative arrangement — in short, the prose 
and the poetry of Sienese painting. 

Sienese narrative painting tends to be scrupulous about 
details and inscenation, quite as a good story-teller naturally 
provides incidents that make for plausibility. We may see 
how Duccio’s mind works in the familiar theme of Christ 
entering Jerusalem, Figure 38. Duccio sets the spectator 
in a garden with an open gate, thus throwing the scene back a 
little. Above the procession and the rejoicing throng rises a 
city wall, and still higher against the sky bristle Gothic towers 
and spires. ‘hus the theme gains picturesqueness and variety. 
One forgets that there is hardly space for the welcoming throng 
before the gate, and that the donkey’s four feet are on a level 
although he is going up hill. These little maladjustments 
show that while Duccio took infinite pains in inventing the 
setting, he borrowed the figure groups bodily from earlier 
Byzantine compositions in which the setting was simpler. In 
this piecing-together process he turns some pretty sharp 
corners, but he never sacrifices clarity and expressiveness. 

In the scene where the maid servant catches the Galilean 
burr in Peter’s voice, Figure 39, and asks if he be not a fol- 
lower of Jesus, we find Duccio’s method quite at its best. 
Nothing could be better than the sudden turn of the girl with 
one foot on the steps. Fine, too, is the concentration of the 
crowd on the exciting problem of gossip. Well-observed, their 
actions as they warm their feet and hands at the fire. Vivid, 
too, the impulsive gesture of Peter as he denies the charge, 
The place, a court yard with a staircase leading right into the 
picture above, which represents the court room where Jesus 
is being questioned, is most elaborately planned. One looks 
back through a portal into farther spaces. All this was so 
new and interesting that I presume the Sienese have never 
noticed to this day that the seated group would never fit in 
the space assigned to it and that the positions-of the figures 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE 69 


are ambiguous. The picture does admirably its work of 
telling a story spiritedly, and that is enough. 

Duccio’s Calvary, Figure 41, is remarkable for breadth, 
spectacular effectiveness, and a measured pathos. As usual 


Fic. 40. Duccio. The Marys Fic. 39. Duccio. Peter denies 
at the Tomb. — Opera del Duomo. Christ.— Opera del Duomo, Siena. 


he multiplies actors and incidents while keeping the orderli- 
ness of the arrangement. The slightness of all the forms, their 
little weight and uncertain balance are apparent. And there 
is, on the same principle of taste, a similar attenuation of 
emotion. Where Giotto at Padua gave stark tragedy, Duccio 
offers a gentle flutter of restrained grief. 

Such is the average of these narratives, clear, picturesque, 
circumstantial, infused with a generalized and never very 
intense emotion. There are some, mostly composed with few 
figures, which reveal a great fastidiousness of arrangement. 
In such a composition as the Marys at the Tomb, Figure 40, 
Duccio reveals himself as pure zsthete, as consummate mas- 
ter of linear composition. The motive is essentially insignifi- 
cant, merely that the Marys shrunk at the sight of the angel 
at the tomb, but out of that motive of withdrawal is wrought 
through the little panel a lovely rhythm to which everything 
contributes — the rise of the cliffs and their crinkly edges, 
the contrasting angles of the tomb and its impossibly tilted 


70 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


lid, the reciprocal curve of the angel. We grasp in the picture 
a general truth which reaches far beyond Duccio and Siena, 


Fic. 41. Duccio. Calvary. — Opera del Duomo. 


that a too conscious struggle for style precludes any complete 

expression of emotional significance. For this picture is as 

trivial as a narrative as it 1s exquisite as a decoration. 
Duccio, who disappears from our sight about the year 1318, 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE 71 


fixed once for all the character of the Sienese school. In 
narrative it was to adopt the placid and tender tone of legend, 
most unlike the urgent and dramatic mood of Giotto. The 
Sienese artist was too reverent to raise the question how did 


Fic. 42. Simone Martini. Madonna in Majesty. Fresco. — Palazzo 
Pubblico, Siena. 


this happen, and how did the persons feel; he asked rather 
“How do we feel about it as believers?”? The beauty of the 
work, then, is not that of outer reality but of revery and 
meditation. It never has the tang and variety of good Floren- 
tine narrative painting, but within its lovingly modulated 
monotony, Sienese narrative painting is supremely charming. 

Duccio also started in Siena a somewhat worried and petty 
concern with accessories, architecture, complications of per- 
spective. He inaugurated a tradition of material splendor in 
gilding, tooling, delicate graduation of color which remained 
the glory of Sienese painting for nearly two centuries. So 


72, HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


far as we know he painted only in tempera on panel, and 
the Sienese generally were to triumph in this feminine form 
of work rather than in the masculine methods of fresco. 
Finally Duccio took over from Byzantine art and perfected cer- 
tain finesses of highly simplified and abstract composition, a 
pure zstheticism distinctly Sienese and wholly alien to the 
warm humanism of Florence. You will find this austerely 
lovely style at its best in Simone Martini, and surviving 
as late as Sassetta and the middle of the fifteenth century. 

After Duccio, Sienese painting divides itself into two ten- 
dencies, one aristocratic, chivalric and esthetic, deriving 
from his decorative manner; the other popular, narrative and 
realistic, deriving from his minutely staged scenes on the back 
of the great altar-piece. Of the aristocratic style Simone 
Martini is the greatest exemplar, of the popular style, the 
brothers Lorenzetti. 

Simone Martini was born in 1283 or thereabouts. We 
first meet him as an artist in the great frescoed Majesty of 
the Virgin, Figure 42, completed in 1315 for the Palazzo 
Pubblico, Siena. The arrangement is like that of Duccio’s 
Majesty, finished only five years earlier, and the facial types 
are generally those of Duccio. But the great fresco gains 
clarity and impressiveness from the added space, from the 
picturesque motive of a canopy, from the isolation and eleva- 
tion of the Madonna above her escort, and from the rich 
Gothic forms of the throne, which are a novelty in painting, 
While most of the faces show the orientalism of Duccio, 
the Madonna has the level-browed, intent character of Gothic 
art, and the Child is realistic. Gothic again is the graceful 
border with its fine medallions, and the bright colors of the 
whole. It is the most splendid enthroned Virgin in the world, 
and she is conceived chivalrically as a sort of tournament 
queen with her paladins upholding a canopy, and angel 
pages on their knees offering roses and lilies. 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE 75 


To the Sienese this was a political picture, as a rhymed 
inscription in Italian shows. ‘The saintly patrons of Siena 
address the Virgin: 


“Angelic flowers, roses and lilies 

With which the heavenly meadow is adorned, 

Delight me less than do good counsels. 
‘But sometimes I see such as verily 

Despise me and my city betray, 

And gain praise the more for evil words, 

With such as merit condemnation.” 


The Virgin answers the saints patrons somewhat evasively: 


“Fix my delights in your minds, 

So that I shall, as ye wish, 

Fulfil your honorable requests. 

But if the powerful molest the weak, 
Oppressing whether with shame or harm — 
Let not your prayers be made for these 
Nor for whomsoever betrays my city.” 


In Simone’s work this great 
Majesty is an exception. He 
preferred generally to work on a 
more restricted scale, to burn 
the lamp of zsthetic sacrifice. 
I can merely allude to the great 
idealized portrait of St. Louis of 
Toulouse, in S. Lorenzo, Naples. 
It was painted for King Robert 
of Anjou, whose kneeling figure 
appears in the picture, sometime 
after 1317. The thing is resplend- 


ent in gold and azure, adorned Fic. 43. Simone Martini. St.Martin 
by curiously twisted Gothic Knighted. — Lower Church, Assist. 
borders; in sentiment it is impassive as a Buddhist painting. 


74. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


About the year 1325, we may surmise, Simone was called 
to Assisi to fresco the Chapel of St. Martin in the Lower 
Church. He set upon the walls so many fairy tales, tender 
and sprightly in sentiment, provided with the few essential 


| Fic. 44. Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi. The Annunciation. — Uffizi. 
accessories that a rapid story-teller would need. What more 
charming than the boy Martin praying while they bind on 
him the equipment of a knight, Figure 43, and musicians 
sound a fanfare! What more gallant than the lad setting out 
on crusade against the Teutons who lurk in a cleft of the 
background! This gracious childlike quality, quite akin to the 
tender phase of Duccio, is exceptional in Simone, who habit- 
ually is the strenuous decorator. 

His sparse and austere methods appear clearly in the 
commemorative fresco of Guidoriccio, hired general of Siena, 
and conqueror of Sassoforte. It is in the Palazzo Pubblico 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE 76 


and duly dated 1328. Nothing is realistic but the horse and 
rider. They are isolated, hold alone a field made up of 
pure symbols for camps, and fortresses and craggy hill-tops, 
yet the martial effect is unmistakable and the composition 
most quaintly impressive. 7 

The quintessence of Simone’s later art is in the famous 
Annunciation of the Uffizi, Figure 44. In order to justify 
the most nervously exquisite of linear arrangements he has 
chosen the least significant moment of the event. His Virgin 
is merely a sullen princess resenting an intrusion; the Gabriel, 
an etherialized courtier pleading a cause with apologies. But 
the contrast of the advancing and shrinking motives gave 
Simone precisely what he wanted. He builds up areas richly 
colored or brocaded, bounded by sharp curves, relieved by 
flutters and spirals of flying drapery, and accentuated by such 
details as the olive twigs and the lily which have the crisp 
incisiveness of finest metal work. As a triumph of pure 
decoration Gothic painting has nothing better to show 
than this lovely panel which was finished in 1333 for the 
chapel of Sant’ Ansano at Siena. It has little quality of 
heart in it, and no reverence save that of consummate work- 
manship. 7 

Great honors awaited Simone. He was called to the exiled 
papal court at Avignon in 1339, met Petrarch, painted Pe- 
trarch’s Laura and is lauded in one of the poet’s sonnets. 
Of Simone’s work at Avignon we have only a few small panels 
scattered between Antwerp, Paris, Liverpool, and Berlin. 
The compositions, most of which belonged to a composite 
altar-piece depicting Christ’s passion, waver between his old 
simple style and a crowded and animated mood reminiscent 
of Duccio, and influenced by the Lorenzetti. Simone is un- 
able to resist the universal tendency towards diffuse narrative, 
and in so far as he yields to it, he is less than himself. Christ 
Bearing His Cross, in the Louvre, exemplifies the extravagance 


76 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


and morbidness of this latest manner, Figure 45. His 
strength lies in sacrifice and abstraction, his real affinities are 
the contemporary Buddhist painters of China and Japan, 
though of course he knew nothing of them. He died in 1344, 
leaving behind him a tradition 
of fastidious artistry which was 
potent in Siena for over a cen- 
tury. 

As late as 1450, Lorenzo Ghi- 
berti informs us in his “‘Com- 
mentaries,”? the Sienese regarded 
Simone Martini as their greatest 
painter. He differed from them, 
preferring, himself, Ambrogio 
Lorenzetti. ‘This was an emi- 
nently Florentine choice, Am- 
brogio’s warmth, concreteness, 
and elaboration were on the 
whole Florentine. He worked 
for several years at Florence, 
must have known Giotto, cer- 
tainly studied him with discern- 
ing admiration. With his elder 
brother, Pietro, Ambrogio Lorenzetti gave to Duccio’s tradition 
of detailed narrative painting its perfected form. They were 
great fresco painters, and most characteristic as such. In 
panel painting they are less original, but they bring into this 
highly conventional art a great ardor and curiosity. They 
represent the popular average of Siena as Simone Martini 
represented its aristocratic minority. 

We first meet Pietro Lorenzetti as an artist in the altar- 
back at the Pieve, Arezzo, ® Figure 46, which was finished in 
1320. It is an ancona, or compartmented piece and the most 
splendid that has come down in Romanesque form. The fig- 


Fic. 45. Simone Martini. Christ 
bearing His Cross. — Louvre. 


SIENA AND MEDIEVAL STYLE 77 


ures are of two sorts. The Madonna is of intent Gothic type, 
and the fine motive of holding off the Christchild at elbow 
length in order to see him better is borrowed from Giovanni 
Pisano, who in turn took it from French Gothic sculpture. 


Fic. 46. Pietro Lorenzetti. Madonna with Saints, 1320. — Pieve, Arezzo. 


So are the forms above in the Annunciation new and graceful, 
while the little boxed room with its plastic column is also 
novel. The Assumption of the Madonna in the highest pin- 
nacle is probably the earliest occurrence of this famous Sienese 
theme in painting. But all the figures of saints in the three 
orders of the side panels are taken almost without change 
from Duccio’s great altar-piece. It would be interesting to 
trace Pietro’s emancipation through a dozen panels. No one 
better combined dignity with grace, and feeling, and splendor. 


78 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


His work in fresco is fragmentary and confused with that of 
his younger brother. We are certain of nothing except a frag- 
ment of a deeply felt Calvary in the Church of St. Francesco, 
at Siena. Many critics ascribe to him the agitated and wildly 


Fic. 47. Pietro Lorenzetti, or Follower. St. Francis receiving the Stigmata. 
Fresco. — Lower Church, Assisi. 


picturesque frescoes of the Passion in the left transept of the 
Lower Church at Assisi.9 But this, I think, is a mistake. 
Pietro is never in his certain works so lively and indecorous 
and casual. We have to do with an artist influenced by 
Duccio working about 1330, Pietro himself may appear as the 
Stigmatization, Figure 47, and one or two of the other simpler 
compositions. The other frescoes are chiefly interesting as 
showing the dangers of the panoramic method of Siena. 
Take the Last Supper, Figure 48. The theme is simply lost 
in the fantastic richness of the accessories. It is hard to find 
Christ or Judas, for the eye seeks the radiating rafters or 


ee a 


SIENA AND MEDIZVAL STYLE 79 


the scullery where cats lurk and eager scullions wipe the 
dishes. 

In the Birth of the Virgin, dated 1342, Figure 49, Pietro 
spoils a carefully studied and well-felt picture by elaboration 


Fic. 48. School of Pietro Lorenzetti. The Last Supper. Fresco. — 
Lower Church, Assisi. 


of the setting. The frame is conceived as the plastic front of 
a Gothic room within and behind which, spaces are multiplied 
confusingly. Here the pedantic preoccupation with the prob- 
lem of space offends the eye and destroys the unity of what 
in a simpler setting would be a monumental composition. 
It illustrates the dangers of that smaller realism which from 
Duccio down afflicted the more progressive painters of Siena. 
Such a picture enables us to appreciate the tact and thought- 
fulness with which Ambrogio Lorenzetti approached his 
narrative themes. 

Ambrogio Lorenzetti was born about the beginning of the 
century. In 1331 and later he painted remarkable frescoes 


80 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


for the Church of St. Francis. These if complete would afford 
the most interesting comparisons with Giotto at Florence, but 
the two that remain are among the best narrative paintings 


Fic. 49. Pietro Lorenzetti. Birth of the Virgin. — Opera del Duomo, 
Siena. 


of the time. What will first strike the observer in the story 
of St. Louis of Toulouse renouncing his throne as he takes the 
Franciscan vow, Figure 50, is the variety and orderliness 
of the emotions. The devotion of the saint is well offset by 
the intense, melancholy curiosity of his brother Robert, who 
becomes king through the sacrifice. The audience is divided 
into admiring Franciscans and idly marveling courtiers, the 


ee 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE SI 


whole well dominated by the kindly and reverend figure of 
the Pope. Remarkable is the methodical division of the 
spaces. A slender column establishes the picture plane and 
sets the figures back. A sort of desk in a hollow square de- 


Fic. 50. Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Prince Louis of Toulouse receives the 

Franciscan Vow. — San Francesco, Stena. 

fines and isolates the monastic group, while the courtiers 

have their appropriate location in a third plane of alcoves. 

Florence has next to nothing of this sort at this period, and 

it may be noted that this careful division of spaces is not mat- 

ter of display and curiosity as in Duccio, but is logical and 

effective as regards the persons of the narrative. 

Of similar significance, but more dramatic and picturesque, 
is the martyrdom of the Franciscan missionaries before the 
Sultan of Morocco. The elaborated spaces make for clarity, 
the entirely professional andimpersonal cruelty of the Moorish 
tyrant and his bodyguard is splendidly caught and effectively 


82 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


contrasted with the courageous submission of the martyrs. 
Lorenzo Ghiberti praises the energy and character of this 
work, and the observer of today feels as deeply its romantic 
appeal. All the figures are set on receding platforms, the 


Fic. 51. Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Madonnain Majesty. — Massa Marittima. 


problem of space is solved along lines of intelligent literalism. 

It would be a pleasure to dwell on the Madonnas of Am- 
brogio. The tragic Madonna of 8. Francesco, Figure 33, 
the Madonna with St. Dorothy and St. Lucy, in the Siena 
Academy, the Virgin in Mr. Dan Fellowes Platt’s collection are 
among thebest. Nootherearly Italianso combined nobility with 
motherly warmth. His splendor and sweet dignity may best be 
felt in the Majesty of the Virgin, Figure 51, in the little town of 
Massa Marittima. The central motive, Mary and the Child em- 
bracing, 1s almost Ambrogio’s invention. Herings the changeson 
it in lovely modulations, while always retaining monumen-_ 
tality. This picture is as stately as Duccio’s Majesty, and 


SIENA AND MEDIEVAL STYLE 83 


as resplendent as Simone Martini’s, while having qualities of 
ardor and fancifulness all its own. The fairy-like Virtues on 
the steps of the Madonna’s throne especially show the rich 
vein of pure fantasy which accompanied Ambrogio’s robust- 
ness. The picture may be dated about 1336 or later. 

Previous to its painting Ambrogio had passed some years 
at Florence, where he must have studied and known Giotto, 
and where he himself influenced powerfully the beginnings of the 
new panoramic style. Whatever frescoes he himself did there 
have perished, and the only memorials of his visit are certain 
delightful little panels telling with vivacity and utmost cir- 
cumstantiality the legends of St. Nicholas. At Florence he 
must have analyzed Giotto’s great political frescoes, now lost, 
which depicted in symbols good and bad government. ‘These 
were surely the inspiration for the political symbols and illus- 
trations which Ambrogio, in the year 1337 and later, painted 
in the great hall of the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena. 

The most famous is the Allegory of the State. The Com- 
mune sits enthroned, above in the air are the theological vir- 
tues — Faith, Hope and Charity; seated at the side are the 
four secular virtues — Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and 
Fortitude — and with them two additional personifications 
useful to a state — Magnanimity and Peace. The graceful re- 
laxed figure of Peace, Figure 52, with her filmy drapery is 
famous. Below the platform on which the Commune sits with 
attendant virtues, are the grim, disciplined forms of men-at-arms 
and a throng of magistrates and citizenry. At the left aresym- 
bolized Concord and Justice as the supporters of a well-ruled 
state. Here the symbolism is childishly obvious. Concord 
holds her smoothing plane. From her hand go strings which 
bind in fellowship a group of citizens below and lead above 
to the figure of Justice. Still higher is Wisdom. Justice deals 
punishment with one hand and grants aid with the other; 
the Middle Ages never admitted that Justice was merely puni- 


84. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


tive. The figures of Justice and Concord are superb,— Am- 
brogio’s Madonna type on a heroic scale. 

As a pictorial representation of the finest medizeval ideas 
of statecraft, this fresco is of incomparable interest. As a 
decoration it is hardly successful. ‘The theme has hampered 
the artist, the handling of the figures in several scales with 
the largest above, produces confusion and _ topheaviness. 
Beautiful in the parts, it is disappointing in the whole. 

Far better merely as decoration is the companion fresco 
which represents the Effects of Good Government, Figure 53. 
We have a peaceful city, the entrancing spectacle of Siena as 
she was about the year 1339. Girls are dancing a carol in the 
foreground with the quaintest dignity, mounted merchants 
are passing, and if the picture were better preserved, we should 
as they still call themselves 


ce b 


see the mechanics — or “‘artists’ 
in Italy — working cheerily in their shops. In its richness 
without confusion, this is the very triumph of the panoramic 
realism which Ambrogio made popular throughout Italy. 

There are many more frescoes in this series, mostly by 
imitators of Ambrogio. The Sienese region is full of works 
by him or by his faithful followers. His panel pictures are 
in many galleries of Europe and America. ‘They all confirm 
the record of Ghiberti that Ambrogio had the habits of a 
nobleman — a great sympathy, a fine scrupulousness, a real 
magnanimity. Certain contemporaries seem greater, Giotto 
surely, Simone Martini perhaps, but no Italian painter until 
Raphael himself reveals so complete and harmonious a devel- 
opment. We find no trace of the brothers Lorenzetti after 
1348. Presumably they perished in the great plague of that 
year. 

For a century after the plague year, 1348, the painters of 
Siena imitated either the narrative realism of Ambrogio or 
the decorative sparseness of Simone Martini. It is customary 
to align them as of one camp or the other. We may indeed 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE 85 


Fic. 52. Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Fic. 164. Luca Tomme. — The 
Peace, from the Fresco of Good Assumption of the Virgin. — 
Government. — Palazzo Pubbli- Farves Coll., New Haven, Conn. 
co, Siena. 


Fic. 53. Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Results of Good Government — The 
Peaceful City. Fresco. — Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. 


86 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


say that such painters as Lippo Memmi, Andrea Vanni, and 
Naddo Ceccarelli faithfully echo Simone, while such a master 
as the influential Bartolo di Fredi, who is traceable as late as 
1388, seems completely Lorenzettian. But most of the painters 
follow freely both tendencies, employing Simone’s formulas in 
altar-pieces with few figures, and Ambfogio’s in narrative. 
Such eclecticism produced abundantly works of charm, for 
delicate sentiment and ornate workmanship, but rather few 
works of originality. Perhaps because of willingly accepted 
limitations, the average is higher than that of Florence. 
Throughout Italy it was a more popular style than the Floren- 
tine. It dominated the coast region from Naples to Valencia, 
penetrated into Umbria and the Adriatic marshes, and even 
got a temporary foothold in Florence itself. It fitted in better 
with medizval ideals than the art of Giotto and Orcagna, 
which implied classical antiquity and anticipated the human- 
ism of the Renaissance. On the whole Sienese art runs down 
after the Lorenzetti died, losing the robustness which Am- 
brogio had learned of Giotto, but its decline is gentle and in- 
terrupted by beneficent reactions towards its established 
glories. We may pass rapidly, and chiefly considering types, 
the fifty-odd years between the Lorenzetti and the new century. 

Luca Tommé is credited with an exquisite little Assumption, 
Figure 54, in the Jarves Collection at Yale University. The 
picture, though it may be as late as 1370, repeats loyally the 
formulas which Pietro Lorenzetti invented nearly fifty years 
earlier. Perhaps Bartolo di Fredi, a rather superficial and 
overfecund artist, best represents the average condition as the 
fourteenth century closed. In such a panel as the Adoration 
of the Magi, in the Siena Academy, Figure 55, we see the 
familiar theme for the first time expanded in a Lorenzettian 
sense. It becomes a pageant, probably under the influence of 
contemporary mystery plays. It is best conceived in the little 
scenes in the background; the facial types and the simplified 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE 87 


setting on the whole recall Simone Martini. In other narra- 
tive pictures Bartolo vies with Ambrogio Lorenzetti in com- 
plication of planes and architecture. On the whole he is a 
rather faint echo, but his note while thin is also true. 

The declining century produced only one robust painter in 
Siena, the mysterious Barna whose damaged frescoes of the 


Fic. 56. Barna. The Transfigura- 


tion. — Collegiata, S. Gemignano. 


Fic. 55. Bartolo di Fredi. Adora- 
tion of the Magi. — Siena. 

Passion we see in the Collegiate Chureh of San Gemignano. 
The forms are those of Simone Martini, the compositions even 
more sparse than his, denuded of all accessories, and power- 
fully impressive for this reason. The mood is brusque and 
tragic, with nothing of Sienese sweetness. Barna seems a kind 
of provincial Giotto misplaced and unrealized in the Sienese 
country. In the fresco of the Transfiguration, Figure 56, 
he rises to sublimity. Fra Angelico will merely repeat him 
in San Marco sixty years later. Vasari tells us that Barna 
died from a fall from his painting scaffold in 1381, and that 
he was then young. If so, his originality was tremendous, for 
he cleared away ruthlessly all the delightful but trivial stage 
furniture so diligently collected by Duccio and the Lorenzetti. | 
Modern criticism ascribes to him several panels, and I venture 


88 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


to add to the list the simple and stately Marriage of St. Cath- 
erine in the Boston Museum of Art. Certainly it is one of 
the most serious creations of the period. The type of the Christ 
and the concise and characterful arrangement seem to mark 


Fic. 57. The Three Living and Three Dead, detail from the Loren- 

zettian fresco, The Triumph of Death. — Campo Santo, Pisa. 
it as a fine Barna. The base is interesting, representing the 
composing of a blood feud, and Miracles of St. Michael and 
St. Margaret. While the simple pattern continues the tradi- 
tion of Simone, Barna avoids Simone’s linear grace-notes. 
The finical element of the predecessor yields to a kind of real- 
ism. Barna is really the critic of the Sienese school. He 
silently insists that one may be decorative without too much 
artifice, and dramatic without overtaxing the stage carpenter, 
A very solitary and elevated spirit, to whom full justice has 
not yet been done. 

Most remarkable among the works inspired by the Loren- 
zetti is the coarsely effective Triumph of Death, Figure 57. 
in the famous cemetery cloister, Campo Santo, at Pisa. It 
represents the hazards of the mortal life in view of certain 
death and judgment. At the left a royal hunting party 1s 


a 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE 89 


stopped short by the sight and stench of three festering bodies 
in coffins. The Hermit, Saint Macarius, points the obvious 
lesson that kings and lords and fair ladies will turn to dust. 
In the centre, miserable folk beckon and cry to Death to 
descend and put them out of their distress. The harridan 
death ignores the prayer and flies over a pile of corpses towards 
a gay garden party. Death loves to cut down the young and 
gay and happy, leaving the old and crippled to prolonged 
sorrow. In the upper left hand corner you have monks going 
about their quiet pursuits. The whole adjoining fresco is 
given up to the lives of such desert saints. At the upper right 
are angels and fiends struggling for little nude forms that 
represent human souls. This motive is a sort of overflow 
from a picture of the Last Judgment. The grim moral of the 
three pictures is that the worldly life is one of mortal peril, 
which may best be avoided by renouncing the world and join- 
ing a monastic order. The work was completed about 1375, 
is in the rougher following of the Lorenzetti, and has been 
famous ever since it was painted on the cloister wall. En- 
tirely Sienese in its conception, in its ruggedness it transcends 
the usual softness of the school. It is the last significant 
work of the 14th century. 

Siena passed into the fifteenth century without greatly 
changing her art. In the work of such traditional figures as 
Taddeo Bartoli one may observe a certain coarsening of the 
tradition. Mere splendor tends to replace the old delicacy, 
narrative painting becomes ever more complicated and con- 
fused. The latter tendency is manifested in frescoes which 
Domenico di Bartolo painted, between 1440 and 1443 for the 
Hospital of the Scala, Figure 58. Their crowded pictur- 
esqueness grows legitimately out of the Lorenzettian tradition, 
as does the elaboration of architectural accessories. But the 
work also implies a certain knowledge of the current Floren- 
tine discoveries in linear perspective and in architecture. A 


go HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


small ingenuity runs pretty wild in these decorations, valuable 
as they are in picturing the times. 

About the time these frescoes were designed, a renovation 
of Sienese painting was being made along divergent lines by 


Fic. 58. Domenico di Bartolo. Clothing the Naked, from fresco series, 
the Seven Acts of Mercy. — Scala Hospital, Siena. 


Stefano di Giovanni, nicknamed Sassetta," and by the eager 
eccentric, Giovanni di Paolo. In both cases we have a reac- 
tionary reform. Sassetta restudies devoutly Simone Martini 
and the Lorenzetti, infusing his own tender mysticism both 
into decoration and narrative. In a manner he combines the 
two great currents of Siena’s past. We may best approach 
him through the triptych of the Birth of the Virgin in the 
Collegiate church at Asciano, Figure 59. It is his earliest 
work painted not much later than 1428 when, being thirty 
five years old, he joined the Painters’ Guild. The picture is 
conceived in the strictest Lorenzettian fashion, the frame 
being treated as the front or extension of the painted archi- 
tecture. Aside from this carefully constructed setting, with 
its successive spaces, the casual and familiar distribution of 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE QI 


the figures suggests strongly Pietro Lorenzetti. But the rich 
accessories in Sassetta’s hands are delicately selected, the 
humble gestures have an artless grace, the secondary figures 
such as the brocaded handmaid entering from the rear are 


Fic. 59. Sassetta. The Birth of . 
the Virgin. — Asciano. Fic. 60. Sassetta. Marriage 
of St. Francis to Poverty. 

— Chantilly, France. 


fascinating in their own right. An air of alert gentleness runs 
through the picture. It is shared by persons of all ages. 
Such episodes as the chatting of two old men before a respect- 
fully listening urchin add nothing to the story but strongly 
reinforce the faery charm of the whole. Winsomeness has 
supplanted the monumental quality of the older school. Above 
in the side gables are the scenes of the passing of the Virgin’s 
soul and her funeral procession, both conceived in the manner 
of the Lorenzetti. But the familiar forms are singularly ani- 
mated by a new spirit of tenderness. By a paradox these little 
stories are really more like Duccio than any intervening work. 

Sassetta painted seven years on his masterpiece, the now 
Scattered ancona for the Franciscan Church at Borgo San 


92 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING | 


Sepolcro. The central panel was a St. Francis in ecstacy, 
now in Bernard Berenson’s collection. On the back were 
eight of the legends of the “Fioretti.”” The panel was finished 
in 1444. Especially delightful is the panel at Chantilly which 


Fic. 61. Sassetta. Temptation of St. Antony. — Farves Coll., New 
Haven, Conn. 


represents St. Francis’s mystical betrothal with Poverty, 
Figure 60. This scene is before Monte Amiata, spaced off 
from the group by checkerboard fields. The maidens, Chas- 
tity and Obedience, sway lily-like beside their more resolute 
sister, Poverty, upon whose timidly offered hand the little 
saint firmly fixes a ring. Above, the celestial trio rises over 
the mountain line, Poverty turning a regretful face to her 
humble bridegroom. The simple pattern with its swaying 
lines derives from Simone Martini, but there is none of his 


SIENA AND MEDLEVAL STYLE 93 


petulant superiority in it, none of his nervousness. The realm 
is not the airless heights of a pure zstheticism but a very 
human dreamland. Again Duccio at his best is the closest 
analogy. Bernard Berenson in his admirable little book 4 
Painter of the Franciscan Legend well describes the technical 
perfection of such work as this. It is conceived in ‘ 
which have in themselves an energy and vitality, that, whether 
they are representative or calligraphic, give off values of move- 
ment, and values of movement have the power to suggest 
the unembodied, life unclogged by matter, something in brief 
that comes close to the utmost limits of what visual art can 


‘outlines 


do to evoke spirit.” 

Apart from these sublimated reveries of Sassetta which 
express themselves in utmost delicacy of line, hue, and touch, 
he had a refreshing, drastic, almost a humorous side, which 
may be exemplified in a Temptation of St. Antony, Figure 
61, in the Jarves Collection at New Haven. Beside his 
coral-red hut in a desert bounded by a wood that seems the 
world’s end, the Saint starts away from a demure and very 
plain little girl. He is perplexed, divining rather than see- 
ing the tiny bats’ wings which mark her as a demon. The 
horizon is so curved that one almost feels the old earth swing- 
ing unconcernedly beneath this dilemma. A picture full of 
grotesque and authentic imagination, most true to the hob- 
goblin tradition of the expiring Middle Ages. 

Sassetta died in 1450, and his two long-lived pupils, Sano di 
Pietro (1406-1481) and Giovanni di Paolo, (1403-1482) kept 
something of his influence alive for still thirty years. 

_ Sano needs few words. He took nothing from his master 
but certain formal patterns, fine gilding and blithe colors. 
He repeats himself tediously, there are over fifty of his panels 
in the Siena Academy alone, yet is so genuine and unpre- 
tending that one forgets his lack of delicacy and insight. A 
little Coronation of the Virgin, at New Haven, may sufh- 


94 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


ciently represent his decorative phase. It is a nosegay of fair 
colors on burnished gold. In narrative painting he is Loren- 
zettian without the finesse of his master. At least he helped 
prolong a lovely tradition beyond its natural term, and that 


Fic. 62. Giovanni di Paolo. Young St. John Baptist goes to the Desert. 
— Formerly Charles Butler Coll., London. 
is his chief merit. “‘A famous painter and a man wholly 
dedicated to God” — (Pictor famosus et homo totus deditus 
Deo) — we read in his death notice. Siena knew how to ap- 
preciate a traditionalist. 

Giovanni di Paolo, on the contrary; suffered not. from defi- 
cient originality but from its excess. He selects restlessly 
from the older pictures. You will find pure Duccian figures 
in his paintings of the fifties. He studies the sparse decorative 
perfections of Simone Martini and exaggerates their nervous- 
ness. He drives expression into caricature, seeks strength in 
distortion, was the post-impressionist of his day. His extrava- 
gance is unpleasing in his larger pieces, but is piquant enough 


SIENA AND MEDLEVAL STYLE 95 


in his numerous small panels. One of a pair in English private 
possession shows the Youthful St. John jauntily setting off 
for the desert, with a quite cubistic treatment, Figure 62, of 


Fic. 63. Matteo di Giovanni. Saint Barbara with Saints. — S. Domenico. 


the lines of the fields. The motive is still more ingeniously 
employed in one of a remarkable set of pictures belonging to 
Mr. Martin Ryerson of Chicago. Giovanni’s predilection for 
distortion and grimace is shown in The Baptism of Christ, 
a pendant to the story of the youthful John, both being 
parts of one predella. 

Giovanni died in 1482 at the advanced age of seventy-nine, 
having faithfully preserved the old Gothic tradition while 
making it a vehicle of his own resolute eccentricity. 

The slight concession which Siena made to the Renaissance 
was inaugurated by Lorenzo Vecchietta, active from about 


96 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


1440 to 1480. He was primarily a sculptor and his silver 
altar-back was deemed worthy, in 1506, to displace the 
great Majesty of Duccio from the high altar of the Cathedral. 


Fic. 64. Matteo di Giovanni. Massacre of the Innocents. —S. Agostino. 


Vecchietta chiefly shows the effect of his studies as architect 
and sculptor in a severe regard for anatomy, and in the Re- 
naissance character of his architectural settings. He painted 
for the Cathedral of Pienza a majestic Assumption, his mas- 
terpiece. There are numerous frescoes by him at Siena; he 
is perhaps most agreeable in little stories elaborately set amid 
rich architecture, but he lacks the sprightliness of the true 
natrative tradition. “‘He was a melancholy and solitary per- 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE 97 


son,’ writes Vasari, “and always sunk in thought.” He did 
something to give to the Sienese painting of the end of the 
century a new and complicating thoughtfulness. 


Fic. 65. Benvenuto of Siena. Assumption of the Virgin. — Metropolitan 
Museum, New York. 


Far the most versatile painter at Siena in the second half 
of the fifteenth century was Matteo di Giovanni.2 He was not 
a native, but born about 1430 at Borgo San Sepolcro in upper 


98 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Umbria. There he worked for a time with that stern realist 

Piero della Francesca. Thus Matteo brought to Siena better 
training than his fellows had, but he soon fell contentedly 
into the ways of the place. His madonnas and female saints 


Fic. 66. Girolamo di Benvenuto. Love bound by Maidens. Birth Salver. 
— Farves Coll., New Haven, Conn. 


have a new touch. They are more girlish and fragile than 
their predecessors, more exquisite, more fashionable. The type 
is represented in dozens of panels of which Enthroned Saint 
Barbara, at Saint Domenico, dated 1477» Figure 63, is a fine 
example. 

In such work Matteo continues is tradition of Sassetta 
along somewhat superficial lines of prettiness. He is far more 
Original in the several versions of the Massacre of the Inno- 


SIENA AND MEDLEVAL STYLE 99 


cents, in which seeking a maximum of intensity he achieves 
only a very interesting sort of caricature. The picture at 
S. Agostino, Figure 64, dated 1482, is perhaps the best of 
the group. We are in the realm of the grisly fairy tale, at an 
ogre’s sports. The crowding, tumult, ornate architecture are 
simply Matteo’s attempts to refurbish the old Lorenzettian 
tradition. His real quality best appears in the outlines pre- 
pared for the figure decoration of the pavement of the Cathe- 
dral. In general his is an engaging but entirely undisciplined 
talent, oscillating after the fashion of the moment, alike in 
Florence and Siena, between mere prettiness and sheer rest- 
lessness. He died in 1495, Michelangelo’s star being already 
in the ascendent over neighboring Florence. 

A kind of petrification of the traditional charm of Siena 
is in the work of Benvenuto di Giovanni, scholar of Sassetta. 
He cultivates a resplendent impassivity, is severe without 
much background of knowledge. His stiffness is gracious 
enough, like that of an aristocrat who maintains amid diff- 
culties the dignity of an older school. His sense of formal 
pattern and skill in modeling in a very blond key may be 
enjoyed in his versions of the favorite theme of the Assump- 
tion. One of the best of these, dated at the end of the century 
in the year 1498, is in the Metropolitan Museum, Figure 
65. Benvenuto was born in 1436 and died about 1518. He 
might, had he chosen, have studied the whole realistic develop- 
ment from Fra Angelico to Leonardo da Vinci, but his painting 
keeps a chill virginal quality quite apart from life, its prob- 
lems and allurements. 

His son Girolamo continued the manner with less monu- 
mentality until his death in 1524. ‘To his early activity be- 
longs the delightful salver, Love Bound by Maidens, Figure 
66, in the Jarves Collection at New Haven. It is merely the 
tray on which the gifts were presented to a young mother during 
the visits of congratulation. It was painted for some member 


100 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


of the famous Piccolomini family, presumably about the year 
1500. The stern maidens who are plucking and binding the 
stripling Love, doubtless are personifications of Chastity, 
Temperance and the like. In the middle distance a knight 
rides off free to adventure since Love is safely bound. It is 
an odd theme for a gift to a young bride and mother, but 
the Italians never required consistency in their compliments. 
The daintiness of the treatment is typical for Renaissance 
painting at Siena, which never assumes a robust or realistic 
or humanistic accent. 

There is a refinement which is the harbinger of death. It 
appears in Siena in the person of Neroccio di Landi. He 
sublimates the style of his great predecessors, Simone and 
Sassetta, adding freely the more delicate ornamentation of 
the Renaissance. There is a peculiar pallor in his coloring 
and tension in his modelling. It is an art of nerves and ec- 
stasies, wholly etherial. An admirable Annunciation in the 
Jarves Collection at New Haven shows the rich setting, the 
odd blend of precision with a languor that marks Neroccio as 
true grandson of Simone Martini. There are many little panels 
of Madonnas with saints of amber translucency. They have 
the startling vividness and irreality of an hallucination. And 
there is a portrait of a girl in the Widener Collection, Figure 67, 
which is of a superlatively delicate prettiness. Neroccio was 
born in 1447 and died in 1500. With him passed the special 
fragrance of Sienese art. 

Until 1475, Neroccio was in partnership with one whose 
ambition went far to destroy what Neroccio and Siena stood 
for. Francesco di Giorgio was born in 1439. With an ambi- 
tion and resolution wholly un-Sienese, he mastered the arts of 
painting, sculpture, architecture and engineering. He met 
Leonardo da Vinci at Pavia, worked for the tyrants of Milan, 
competed for the facade of the Cathedral of St. Mary of the 
Flower at Florence. As architect and engineer it appears 


SIENA AND MEDIAVAL STYLE IOI 


that he became a cosmopolitan, in painting it was hardly so. 
He is most delightful in his early phase which is represented 
by a bride chest in the Wheelwright collection, Boston. It 
represents Prince Paris insolently appraising the charms of 
the rival goddesses, and at the 
right riding Troywards in dis- 
regard of the despair of forsaken 
(none. The classical theme is 
tinged with medizvalism, natur- 
alized as Sienese. Later pictures, 
such as [he Nativity, Figure 68, 
in the Sienese gallery, show Fran- 
cesco uneasy, twisting his figures 
for grace and display of knowl- 
edge, working over the old land- 
scape formulas in a semi-realistic 
sense, adding classical architec- 
ture, generally trying to break ve ieee 

; : Fic. 67. Neroccio di Landi. Por- 
the bounds of the old idealism. trait of a Girl. — Widener Coll., 
The result is restlessness or at Elkins Park, Pa. 
best an ambiguous charm. Siena is beginning to regret her 
isolation, to make vain efforts to overtake the tide of human- 
istic realism, to envy Florence, and even Perugia and Cortona. 
From the point of view of the Renaissance she was two 
generations behind, and no longer indifferent to the fact. 

Not merely Francesco di Giorgio tries to do in a decade the 
work of a century, but such younger contemporaries as Fungai 
and Pacchiarotti look to Florence or Umbria. Siena was 
given no time to reconstruct, and her old beautiful art could 
not readily assume new forms. Siena never assimilated the 
Renaissance. It invaded her, killed her native art and sub- 
stituted one without local flavor. Before Francesco di Giorgio 
died, in 1502, he had seen Luca Signorelli called to Siena and 
the clever decorator Pintorricchio. Siena no longer trusted 


102 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


her own artists. Francesco probably took little note of the 
advent in 15o1, of a young Piedmontese painter, Antonio 
Bazzi."3 nicknamed Sodoma, yet with Sodoma _ remained 
| what little future there was in 
Sienese painting. 

Sodoma brought to Siena the 
knowledge of Leonardo da Vinci, 
the new draughtsmanship in 
light and shade. He assimilated 
the sensibility of Siena but 
coarsened it. No painter of the 
time was more overtly sentimen- 
tal. His famous St. Sebastian at 
Florence tells all that need be 
known about him, — his con- 


LF 


siderable skill, his exaggerated 
pathos, his clever use of poise 
and balance, his sober modern 


tonalities. His sentimental pow- 
er is at its height in the fresco 


Fic. 69. Sodoma. Vision of St. : 
Catherine of Siena. Fresco— at §. Domenico, Siena, which 
S. Domenico, Siena. 


represents S. Catherine swoon- 
ing at the vision of her lover, the Christ, Figure 69. Sodoma 
worked indefatigably in and about Siena till 1549. The few 
local painters of a progressive sort, Domenico Beccafumi, 
Girolamo del Pacchia, either directly imitate Sodoma or draw 
from similar alien sources. The only man of genius Siena 
produced in these years, Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), soon 
went to Rome where in architecture he held his own with all 
comers, whereas in painting he became a modest imitator of 
Raphael. 

In the ten years after 1500 the old art perished. Siena 
from being the last radiant exemplar of the glory of the medi- 
zeval spirit sunk to the estate of a fourth class station of the 


SIENA AND MEDIEVAL STYLE 103 


Renaissance. Her idealism could not bear the test of reality. 
Her domain had been that of legend and fairy tale and dream, 
she had ruled it exquisitely for two centuries until sheer taste 
had absorbed her little strength. She had left unforgettable 


Fic. 68. Francesco di Giorgio. Nativity. —S. Domenico, Siena. 


records of her most precious feelings, but little record of her 
outer activities. Think how portraits abound in Florentine 
and Venetian art after 1450! There are practically none at 
Siena. So it would be futile to go to Siena for a greater under- 
standing of the active life. But if you would requicken the 
sense of legend, live over again the tenderness mankind. has 
ever felt for the beautiful past, hear some faint blowing 
of the horns of elfland — if you want this experience, then go 
to The gracious City of the Virgin and you shall find fulfilled 
the generous motto over her main portal — Siena will open 
her heart wide to thee. 


104. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER II 


A SONNET TO THE SPENDTHRIFT CLUB 
by 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO 
translated by 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 


“T give you horses for your games in May, 

And all.of them well trained unto the course — 
Each docile, swift, erect, a goodly horse: 

With armor on their chests and bells at play 

Between their brows, and pennons fair and gay; 
Fine nets and housings meet for warriors, 
Emblazoned with the shields ye claim for yours, 

Gules, argent, or, all dizzy at noon day; 


And spears shall split and fruit go flying up 

In merry counterchange for wreaths that drop 
From balconies and casements far above; 

And tender damsels with young men and youths ~ 

Shall kiss together on the cheeks and mouths 
And every day be glad with joyful love.” 


How VENvuS FARED IN SIENA 


Ghiberti, in his commentaries (ed. Frey, Berlin 1886, p. 57 ff.) tells 
how a marble Venus, bearing the name of Lysippus was dug up at Siena. 

‘“‘T saw it only as drawn by a very great painter of the city of Siena, 
who was called Ambrogio Lorenzetti. This drawing was kept with 
greatest care by a very old Carthusian. This brother was a goldsmith, 
and his father, and was a designer and delighted greatly in the art of 
sculpture; and he began to tell me how that statue was discovered as 
they were making an excavation where now are the houses of the Mala- 
volti; how all those instructed and versed in the art of sculpture, with 
the goldsmiths and painters ran to see this so marvellous and artistic 
statue. Every one praised it greatly, and also the great painters who 
then were in Siena — to every one it seemed absolutely perfect. And 
with all honors they set it upon their fountain, as a most splendid thing. 
All gathered to place it with greatest rejoicing and honor and they 


a 


SIENA AND MEDIA‘VAL STYLE 105 


fixed it magnificently upon that fountain, which statue reigned there 
but passingly.” 

“For as the city had many adversities in the war with the Florentines, 
and the flower of the citizenry were assembled in council, a citizen rose 
and spoke about the statue in this tenor: ‘Gentlemen and citizens, 
having considered that since we have found this statue it has always 
gone wrong with us, and considering that idolatry is forbidden by our 
faith, we must believe of all the adversities which we have that God sends 
them for our errors. And behold in truth that since we have honored 
this statue we have always gone from bad to worse. I am certain that 
so long as we keep it in our territory it will always go wrong with us. 
As a councillor I would advise that it be taken down and shattered and 
split up and be sent to be buried on the soil of the Florentines.’ 

“Unanimously they confirmed the words of their citizen and put them 
in execution, and the statue was buried upon our soil.” 


A PROCESSION ON THE COMPLETION OF Duccio’s MAJESTY 


“On the day that it was carried to the Duomo the shops were shut; 
and the Bishop bade a goodly and devout company of priests and friars 
should go in solemn procession, accompanied by the Nine Magistrates 
and all the officers of the Commune and all the people; all the most 
worthy followed close upon the picture, according to their degree, with 
lights burning in their hands; and then behind them came the women 
and children with great devotion. And they accompanied the said 
picture as far as the Duomo, making procession round the Campo as is 
the use, all the bells sounding joyously for devotion of so noble a pic- 
ture as is this. And all that day they offered up prayers, with great 
alms to the poor, praying God and His Mother who is our advocate, 
that he may defend us in His infinite mercy from all adversity 
and all evil, and that He may keep us from the hands of traitors and 
enemies of Siena.” 

Translated in Edmund G. Gardiner’s The Story of Siena, p. 178, 
from the Anonymous contemporary chronicler published by A. Lisini 
in Notizie di Duccio. 


106 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


A CONTRACT FOR AN ALTAR-PIECE 
BY PIETRO LORENZETTI 


‘Master Pietro, son of the late Lorenzetto, who was of Siena, solemnly 
and willingly promises and agrees with the venerable Father Guido, 
by God’s grace Bishop of Arezzo, who stipulates in the name and stead 
of the people of St. Mary of Arezzo — to paint a panel of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, . . . in the centre of which panel shall be a likeness of 
the Virgin Mary with her Son and with four side figures according to 
the wish of the aforesaid Lord Bishop, working in the backgrounds of 
these figures with finest gold leaf, 100 leaves to a florin, . . . and the 
other ornaments of silver and of best and choicest colors; and using in 
these five figures best ultramarine blue; and in the other adjoining and 
surrounding spaces (panels) of this picture to be painted likenesses of 
prophets and saints, according to the wish of this Lord Bishop, with 
good and choice colors.” 

“Tt must be six braccia long and five braccia high in the middle, 
apart from two columns each a half braccia wide, and in each should 
be six figures worked with the aforesaid gold, and the work shall be 
approved by this Lord Bishop... . 

‘“‘And he [Pietro Lorenzetti] must begin this work according to the 
wish of this Lord Bishop, immediately after the wooden panel shall 
have been made, and must continue in this work until the completion 
of this picture, not undertaking any other work &c. And therefore the 
said Lord Bishop Guido promises to have given and assigned to him 
the panel made of wood; and to pay him for his wages for the picture 
and for colors, gold and silver one hundred and sixty Pisan lire; that is 
the third part at the beginning of the work, the third part at the middle 
of the work, and the remaining third part when the work is finished 
and complete &c.”’ 

“Done in the church of the Holy Angels in Arcalto outside of and 
next to the cemetery.” 

Translated and slightly abridged from 
Borghesi and Banchi, Nuovi Documenti per la Storia dell’ Arte Senese, 
(Doc. 6, p. 10) Siena, 1898. 


This contract well illustrates the elaborateness and strictness of such 
agreements. It may be compared with the picture itself (Fig. 46). 
Apparently the artist persuaded the Bishop to give up the plan of 
twelve prophets and saints on two side pilasters, and made instead a 
greater number (15) of figures in the upper arcade and pinnacles. 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 


Fic. 70. Andrea del Castagno. David, Slayer of Goliath. Parade Stueld. 
— Widener Coll., Elkins Park, Pa. 


108 


CHAPTER III 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 


Ghiberti, Brunellesco, and Donatello about 1400 begin to study Nature and 
the Antique — The new secular spirit— Discontent with the old pictorial 
style expressed in reaction by Lorenzo Monaco —in cautious reform by 
Fra Angelico —and Masolino — in revolutionary reform by Masaccio — 
The Cassone painters as illustrators of contemporary manners — Masaccio 
and the new structure in light and shade — The Problem of the Brancacci 
Frescoes — Masaccio’s enduring influence — The early Florentine Real- 
ists — Paolo Uccello and Perspective — Andrea del Castagno and 
Anatomy — Domenico Veneziano and Oil Painting— Alesso Baldovinetti. 


In the two earlier chapters we have considered what Giorgio 
Vasari calls the vigorous childhood of Italian painting. We 
are now to observe its splendid youth. The story appropriately 
begins with three young men and the year 1401 and with a 
baby, later nicknamed Masaccio, who was born that same 
year. The three young Florentines represent the new time- 
spirit. The lucky one, Lorenzo Ghiberti, has just won a 
competition for the new bronze doors of the Baptistery, and 
has in that one commission more than twenty years of happy 
work ahead. Ghiberti is sensitive and thoughtful beyond the 
wont of the older craftsmen artists. He writes of an antique 
statue: “It has sweetness of modelling which cannot be caught 
either in a strong or a dim light, only the hand and touch can 
find it.” Ghiberti is a critic and analyst as well as a creator. 


’ 


In his “Commentaries,” a product of his old age, he writes: 
“Thus I have always sought for first principles, as to how na- 
ture works in herself, and how I may approach her, how the 
eye knows the varieties of things, how our visual power works, 


how visual images come about, and in what manner the theory 
109 


I1O HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


of sculpture and painting should be framed.” This is the 
mood of the Renaissance in its most serious aspect. 

This student mood was fully shared by two young friends 
of Ghiberti. Donatello, the sculptor, and Brunellesco, later 
the designer of the dome of the Cathedral at Florence, had 
lost in the competition for the Baptistery doors. ‘They ac- 
cepted defeat magnanimously, joined forces and went to Rome, 
where their persistent way of poking among the ruins got them 
the name of the treasure seekers. Such indeed they were, but 
the treasure they sought was not gold, but the secrets of the 
ancient sculptors and architects. So Donatello refined and 
perfected the rugged realism he had from nature. As early 
as 1416 he was to carve the alert and noble St. George for 
Or San Michele. Brunellesco’s life dream was that lightest 
and loveliest of domes which is still the architectural crown of 
Florence, and almost incidentally he threw off designs that 
filled Florence with elegant colonnades and churches which 
renewed the dignity and joyousness of the best Roman build- 
ing. A resolute spirit, Brunellesco once tramped the sixty 
miles from Florence to Cortona to see a newly excavated 
statue. Not incidentally, then, but by hardest study, Brunel- 
lesco worked out a correct practice of linear perspective. 
This needed resource for the painter was now available when 
any one had the sense to ask for it, and all the time young 
Masaccio was growing up in San Giovanni up the Arno. 

Such is the immediate background for the forward move in 
painting which begins in 1422, or thereabouts, and runs 
through fifty years of eager experimentation. As in the first 
revival the sculptors and architects had shown the way to 
the painters, so it was again. But there is also a remoter 
social and commercial background for the Early Renaissance 
which we must consider briefly. The great plague of 1348 
cuts Florentine history sharply in two. It marked an ac- 
celeration of gayety and worldliness, of sports and pageantry. 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM III 


The chronicler Matteo Villani! noted with amazement that 
the plague had caused not repentance but dissipation. He 
was shocked to see the old toga-like costume of the Floren- 
tines give place to the bobtailed jerkins and parti-colored hose 
borrowed from wicked France. Heritages were many and 
heirs few. You saw the gowns of gentle and noble ladies on 
backs of hussies or worse — the new wives. People ran to “‘ the 
sin of gluttony, to feasts and taverns, delicate viands and 
games.” As for the poor folk, they no longer wished to work 
at their trades, they expected the costliest food, they married 
“ad libitum.” So began that loosening up of the old bour- 
geois morals which culminated in the carnivals of the end of 
the fifteenth century and in the libertine muse of Lorenzo the 
Magnificent. All this meant an inspiring spectacle for the 
artist to record, and plenty of lavish patronage, but also it 
meant a disintegrating tendency for art. Painting is great in 
Florence in the measure that it escapes the mere expansive- 
ness of the times and seeks discipline. As if to assert the 
permanency of the spirit of discipline, the very year that set 
Matteo Villani in despair, 1348, gave him also a chapter on 
the founding of the Studio, a school of higher learning which 
eventually became the University of Florence. And the 
course of art for most of the fifteenth century was to be a 
constant interplay and rivalry between the Florence of the 
tavern and race-course and the Florence of the Studio, with a 
final victory for the latter. | 

Oddly enough, the new luxury and gayety and the new 
scholarship conspired to make the old painting inadequate. 
The panoramic style of the fourteenth century was too simple 
and unornate for the Frenchified Florentines; for the new 
generation of strenuous artists, it was too slight and unskilful. 
All the finer spirits at the beginning of the fifteenth century 
are malcontents. Their unrest expressed itself, according to 
temperament, in progress or reaction. The dominating artist 


II2 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


of the moment was a reactionary, Don Lorenzo Monaco,? 
Camaldolese monk. ‘Turning from the superficiality of the 
current Florentine style, he sought his corrective at Siena, 
his birthplace, in the decorative exquisiteness of Simone Mar- 
tini and the narrative warmth and breadth of the Lorenzetti; 
and he imports these qualities into Florence in an art as aris- 
tocratic and retrospective as that of our own Pre-Raphaelites. 
In his hands Gothic painting takes a new and unwarranted 
lease of life. He is a brilliant colorist, a fastidious designer, 
an austere spirit. Even his great Sienese exemplars have 
hardly surpassed his masterpiece, the Coronation of the Vir- 
gin, in the Uffizi. It is dated 1413. In the richness of 
the Gothic frame, the profusion of small incidental figures, 
the festooning curves of the swaying saints and angels, 
and formal symmetry of arrangement, it well represents the 
most florid type of Gothic painting as developed at Siena. 
It is hard to realize that this lovely medizval work was painted 
at the moment when Brunellesco and his friends were already 
turning sharply to nature and to the vision of Hellas. But 
Lorenzo was a cloistered man, and appropriately a vo- 
tary of past perfections. His devout mood is best expressed 
in the gracious Annunciation, Figure 71, which has happily 
never left its original altar in the Church of the Trinita. 
Here Lorenzo follows the Lorenzettian canons of space. A girlish 
delicacy 1n the obedient Virgin is a new note, to be echoed 
more sweetly by Lorenzo’s best follower, Fra Angelico. 
Lorenzo died in 1425. Masaccio had already created the new 
style of painting, but for a couple of decades faithful disciples 
of Don Lorenzo carried on his style. 

A lover of Plutarchian parallels and contrasts would swiftly 
pass from Don Lorenzo Monaco to Masaccio. But one may 
better understand the new movement by taking first men who 
gradually and normally accepted the new knowledge. Such 
are Fra Angelico and Masolino, who began as Gothic painters 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 113 


Fic. 71. Lorenzo Monaco, Annun- 
ciation. — Trinita. 


Fic. 72. Fra Angelico. Annunci- Fic. 73. Fra Angelico. Coronation. 
ation and Adoration of the of the Virgin. — Louvre. 
Magi. — Museum of S. Marco. 


114 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


and ended as Renaissance masters. They show us better the 
average drift of the times than does so revolutionary a figure 
as Masaccio. 

Fra Angelico? was born in 1387 and at twenty entered the 
religious state as a Dominican at Fiesole. How soon Fra 
Giovanni, not yet nicknamed Angelico, became a painter we 
hardly know. But four little pictures designed to inclose in 
their frames relics of the saints may represent his beginnings. 
Three are at San Marco, Florence, one in Mrs. John L. Gard- 
ner’s collection at Boston. The Little Annunciation with an 
Adoration of the Magi, Figure 72, may represent the work. 
It is refined, tender, of jewel-like freshness of color, graceful 
in linear arrangement, at first sight wholly Sienese in inspira- 
tion, and directly dependent on Lorenzo Monaco. A kind of 
veracity under the richness of the expression marks the work 
as after all straightforward and Florentine. The date may be 
about 1425, Fra Angelico, being in his middle thirties, and 
in his art about a century behind the times. In his early 
Gothic manner he conceived some of his masterpieces, such as 
the Coronation of the Virgin, with its glimpse of a celestial 
cloud land; and the whimsically beautiful Last Judgment. 
Both are at the Museum of San Marco. One can believe the 
report of Vasari that each day Fra Angelico prayed before touch- 
ing brush to such masterpieces. Such pictures have the 
hush and charm of a celestial dreamland, a meditative beauty 
quite un-Florentine. 

. All the time Fra Angelico was placidly and intelligently 
studying the new realistic movement launched by Donatello 
and Masaccio. He adopts what suits him, rejecting heavy 
shadows which would dull his Gothic coloring, but adding 
freely realistic details in anatomy, drapery, and architecture. 
The Coronation of the Virgin in the Louvre, Figure 73, though 
it may be only a few months later than that of the Uffizi, no 
longer takes place in a cloudland before lucent gold, but in a 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 115 


quite practicable architecture imitating the niche which 
Michelozzo designed in 1423 for Donatello’s St. Louis of 
Toulouse. The forms too are more substantial, more mun- 


Fic. 74. Fra Angelico. Madonna dei Linaiuoli. Originally an outdoor 
tabernacle. — Museum of S. Marco. 


dane. Soon the architectural accessories become of Renais- 
sance type, and as Mr. Langton Douglas has shown, every new 
invention of Michelozzo for a space of ten years is promptly 
reflected in the painting of Fra Angelico. His greatest Ma- 
donna, that of the Linen Guild, Figure 74, painted in 1433, is 
almost plastic, recalling the severe sweetness of Orcagna. The 
picture is really cumbered by the rich hangings, which with 
the slender swaying angels in the bevel of the frame are al- 
ready an anachronism. In the Descent from the Cross, Figure 
75, we find Fra Angelico skilfully adopting the new dis- 


116 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


coveries in anatomy and landscape. ‘The treatment is broad 
and panoramic in the tradition of the Lorenzetti but all the 
details are carefully studied from nature and not furnished 
by formula. A deeply-felt scene thus gains verisimilitude, 


Fic. 75. Fra Angelico. Deposition. —S. Marco. 


comes out of the realm of legend and becomes an actuality. 
The panel was finished in 1440, and, now that Masaccio was 
gone, there was no living painter who could have put into it 
with equal knowledge so much feeling. 

The building of the great Dominican Convent of San Marco 
between 1437 and 1444 opened to Fra Angelico his great op- 
portunity. It was the gift of Cosimo de’ Medici, now unoficial 
ruler of Florence, who had his good reasons for wishing to 
assure the occasional repose of his busy soul in this world and 
its permanent repose in the next. He often sought seclusion 
in the convent and doubtless saw in progress the fifty or more 
frescoes that Fra Angelico made to adorn it. Fra Angelico 
was painting for deeply religious men, for scholars who had 


a 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 117 


the Scriptures at their finger tips, and for this reason perhaps 
he rejects all smaller realisms, reducing his compositions to 
the mere figures. Thus the San Marco frescoes are more con- 
cise even than those of Giotto, and they reach at their best 


Fic. 76. Fra Angelico. Dominicans receive Christ as Pilgrim. Guest 
house door.—S. Marco. 


a simple sublimity as yet unattained in Italian art. Highly 
formal and decorative, they are free from consciously aesthetic 
taint. Sometimes I think Perugino learned much at San Marco 
and that we may thus regard Fra Angelico as indirectly a 
leading influence on Raphael. The sparse, effective method 
may be illustrated in the fresco set over the door of the guest 
quarters, the Forestiera. It represents a pilgrim Christ being 
received by Dominican brothers. Figure 76. In the stranger 
we entertain The Lord Himself is the simple lesson. The 
figures are set against a conventional blue background but 
are constructed with the authority of the new learning. 

In the Chapter House nearby Fra Angelico painted, about 


118 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


1440, a great Crucifixion, Figure 77. The three laden 
crosses stand out sharply against a murky sky. ‘The setting 
is a mere platform, on which the familiar forms of Mary and 
the beloved Apostles are almost lost in a throng of witnesses 
of every age. We have the Latin Fathers, and their succes- 


‘Fic. 77. Fra Angelico. Mystical Crucifixion. Chapter House. —S. Marco. 


sors—St. Dominic and St. Francis among others. The 
arrangement is highly formal, the mood that of meditation; 
the sharper tragedy of the theme is not insisted on. The 
characterization of the saints is precise and fine, the drawing 
of their forms admirable. Had the composition been set 
against a Gothic, blue background, the mood would have 
seemed merely sentimental. What gives it, with all its ab- 
stractness, an almost sensational tang of reality is the 
arching sky, slaty above and an ominous orange behind the 
figures. The expedient brings an element of definite place and 
time of day for this rendezvous of saints at a mystically re- 
newed Calvary. 

In the cells of the convent, Fra Angelico and his helpers 
painted no less than forty-three frescoes. These were in- 
tended for the private devotions of the brother occupying the 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 119g 


cell, and the subjects were probably chosen not by Fra An- 
gelico himself, but by his cloister mates. The best are con- 
ceived like the frescoes of the lower story. The background 
is just a veiled sky, there are no accessories, the figures loom 
in an indefinite space. Majestic 
is the Transfiguration, Figure 78, 
very lovely the Coronation of 
the Virgin. The angelic painter 
draws the maximum effect from 
the simplest patterns and briefest 
means. There is the measured 
and simple dignity of the early 
Christian mosaics with a warmer 
and more personal feeling. Fra 
Angelico, when he wishes, can be 
elaborately realistic. He is so in 


the garden scene where the Risen 


‘ Fic. 78. Fra Angelico. Trans- 
Christ gently rebuffs the Mag- figuration, fresco in acell at S. 


dalen, in the crowded Adoration Marco. 


of the Magi, which tradition assigns to Cosimo de’ Medici’s 
cell, and in the Annunciation, Figure 79, in the corridor with its 
graceful Renaissance Joggia. In this more circumstantial vein, 
Fra Angelico is delightful, but I think below his best. In all 
the frescoes at S. Marco, however, Fra Angelico appears as 
a wholly Florentine figure with an art based at once on the 
study of nature and on an understanding admiration for the 
masterpieces of Giotto and Orcagna. 

Something of his mediaevalism, of his Sienese manner, 
persists in the numerous little predella panels, such as those 
telling delightfully the story of the doctor saints, Cosmo and 
Damian, and the series with the life of Christ which adorned 
the doors of the plate lockers of the Church of S. Marco. 
With their fully developed pictorialism, their careful regard 
for the minor realisms of setting, these little pictures are the 


120 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


prelude to his last phase at Rome. They are also the last 
Florentine pictures that observe those traditional iconographi- 
cal forms which had persisted for four centuries. 

Fra Angelico ever refused to make money or accept promo- 


Fic. 79. Fra Angelico. Annunciation. Fresco.—S. Marco. 


tion, but became despite himself a celebrity. In 1445 he was 
ordered to Rome by Pope Eugenius IV. The frescoes which 
Fra Angelico then made in the Vatican are lost. There was 
an escape to Orvieto, where Fra Angelico painted half the vault 
of the Chapel of S. Brixio, which Signorelli was later to com- 
plete. Fra Angelico was peremptorily recalled to Rome in 
1447 by the new Pope, Nicholas V, who was planning a new 
chapel in the Vatican. We see it today still radiant with the 
legends of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence that Fra Angelico 
thoughtfully composed more than four hundred years ago. 
Modern critics have generally agreed in finding Fra Angelico’s 
masterpieces in this chapel. If they mean his fullest display 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM I2I 


of knowledge, the opinion is incontestible. Nowhere else has 
Fra Angelico invented such complications of architecture, 
interiors, street perspectives; nowhere has he drawn better 
figures in greater variety. Such frescoes as the lunette with 


Fic. 80. Fra Angelico. St. Stephen Preaching, the Saint before the 
Council. Fresco. — Chapel of Nicholas V., Vatican. 


St. Stephen defending himself before the Jewish doctors and 
preaching to the people, Figure 80, or that depicting St. 
Lawrence giving alms to cripples and poor folk before a ba- 
silica, are learned and rich. But does not their very rich- 
ness obscure both the decorative and emotional appeal? 
Personally I tend to lose the figures in the complexity of the 
setting. Any of Fra Angelico’s little predellas tells its story 
more feelingly and clearly, and no less ably. Under the 
pressure of competition at Rome, Fra Angelico for the 
first time is ostentatious. To please the Pope he revives in 
more specious form the trivialities of the old panoramic style. 
Had he grasped Masaccio’s invention of aerial perspective and 
construction in light and dark, Fra Angelico might have 


Ize HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


carried off his elaborate settings successfully. As it is, they 
confuse the eye by too many linear elements, and only mildly 
delight the mind. Even the sensitive mood of legend, which 
is noteworthy in these frescoes, is better represented in the 
smaller panels. In fairness of 
Gothic fresco coloring, however, 
they are unsurpassed. 

From the point of view of 
tendency, these frescoes are pro- 
foundly instructive. They show 
the irresistible drift towards the 
formation of a new panoramic 
style, a drift that even Fra An- 
gelico, cloistered saint and ex- 
quisite self-critic, was unable to 
escape. In spite of his record 
and better knowledge, he be- 
comes an inaugurator of that 


Be eee eee picturesque, undisciplined, and 


decentralized manner of narra- 
tive which was to be represented by Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, 
and their contemporaries. 

In his later years Fra Angelico declined the archbishopric 
of Florence and died at Rome in 1455. [he tombstone which 
shows the emaciation of his perishable form is in the Roman 
Church of the Minerva; his imperishable monument is his 
frescoed convent home of S. Marco at Florence. 

Of the traditional artists Fra Angelico is by far the most — 
important, but his contemporary Masolino of Panicale must 
be considered, partly because tradition makes him the master 
of Masaccio, partly because of the problems which cluster 
about his work. The picture which is here drawn of him 
represents my own investigations, and differs at several points 
from the views of Berenson and Toesca. If we judge Masolino 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 123 


only by the work that is unquestionably his, he is not an im- 
pressive figure. He inherits the grace of the late Gothic 
style, and he adds rather partially and inconsequentially the 
new discoveries in anatomy and linear perspective. Chance 
took him away from the centre of things, Florence. He 
worked mostly in Lombardy, distant Hungary, provincial 
Tuscany, and Rome. He has industry and charm, but no- 
where shows much intelligence. On the whole he is a poorer 
story-teller than his Gothic predecessors, and only their fair 
equal in panel painting. Had Vasari not ascribed to him, I 
believe erroneously, the early miracles of St. Peter in the 
Church of The Carmine, at Florence, the general historian of 
art would need to pay little attention to Masolino. But he 
has been entangled in one of the most important of artistic 
problems, that of Masaccio, so we cannot ignore him. 

Masolino * was born in 1384, and, according to Vasari, was 
trained by the mysterious Starnina. We have no very early 
works to show his progress, and it is merely a good guess that 
the radiant Annunciation, Figure 81, in the possession of 
Mr. Henry Goldman, New York, may be considerably earlier 
than 1420. It shows the gentleness and animation which are 
constant in Masolino. It combines the Sienese calligraphic 
manner with those smaller realisms of inscenation which ulti- 
mately derive from Duccio. It has coloristic audacities of 
its own in the spotting of brightest vermillion. It gives small 
hint of the Renaissance. At a later date than 1420, by which 
time ordinary perspective began to be understood, I doubt if 
Masolino would have indulged in that preposterous and un- 
necessary central pillar which starts above in middle distance 
and ends below in the picture plane. A Madonna at Bremen, 

dated 1423, shows him still as Gothic as Lorenzo Monaco, 
_ who indeed seems to have influenced him dominatingly. 

In this same year, it is likely that he painted the frescoes 
in the Collegiate Church at Castiglione d’Olona, a lovely 


124 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


village at the foot of the Alps. Masolino had to deal with re- 
fractory spaces, the narrow triangular sectors of the apse. 
This has caused elongation of the figures and piling up of 
fantastic architecture merely to fill the spaces. The mood 
is gentle and graceful, the treatment quite Gothic. These 
six stories of the Virgin must have satished Masolino’s hu- 
manist patron, Cardinal Branda Castiglione; for several 
years later he re-employed the painter to decorate the ad- 
joining Baptistery. Masolino at forty, in the Collegiate 
Church, was still completely Gothic. If we may believe Va- 
sari, at that age he suddenly mastered the new style. Only 
on such a theory can he have painted the Adam and Eve and 
the St. Peter reviving Tabitha, in the Brancacci Chapel, which 
are in the new chiaroscuro technic. Since Masolino, years 
after the time when he was working in that chapel, is still 
incompletely modern as regards light and shade, it is easier 
to suppose that what he actually painted in the Brancacci 
Chapel, about 1424, was merely the vault and the three lu- 
nettes, which have since been destroyed. Thus all the frescoes 
now visible in this famous chapel would be by Masaccio or 
his continuer, Filippino Lippi. Such was the view of the 
excellent critic Cavalcaselle more than fifty years ago. How- 
ever that be, Masolino by 1427 was at Buda (now Budapest), 
where he worked for that extraordinary Florentine exile and 
soldier of fortune, Pippo Spano. After that trip, we hear no 
more of Masolino at Florence—rather oddly, since the Brancacci 
Chapel, which he had begun, still had three unpictured spaces 
after Masaccio’s death in 1428. Apparently the Brancacci 
family did not consider Masolino competent to complete the 
work he had begun. If so, they were wise. 

We next find Masolino, after an interval of more than ten 
years, decorating the Baptistery at Castiglione d’Olona for 
his old patron, Cardinal Branda. The date is 1435. By this 
time Masolino had learned a good deal, but had hardly as- 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 125 


similated his new attainments. Whether as decoration or as 
story-telling, the stories of St. John the Baptist are at once 
confused and pretentious, with little to recommend them save 
the loveliness of their Gothic color, the prettiness of the heads, 


Fic. 82. Masolino. Baptism of Christ, detail of fresco. —Baptistery, 
Castiglione d’Olona. 


and certain vivacious and well-observed gestures. In the 
great fresco of the Baptism of Christ, Figure 82, the inci- 
dental nudes are so carefully anatomized that they distract 
from the general effect, while the deep river valley unhappily 
draws the eye away from the figures in the foreground. A 
similarly pictorially inept use of foreshortened Renaissance 
colonnades appears in the opposite fresco depicting the Feast 
of Herod and the delivery of the head of St. John to Herodias. 
If it were not for the physical discomfort of travelling to the 
end of those interminable colonnades and returning to note 
what is happening nearby in them, these stories themselves 


126 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


would seem vivacious and well-conceived, the female heads 
attractive, the color gay and pleasing. The method of com- 
position is still Lorenzettian 
and the modern architectural 
features inorganic. 

A few years later Masolino 
was swept to Rome by the great 
wave of rebuilding and redeco- 
rating which accompanied Pope 
Martin V’s return from Avignon. 
There in the Chapel of the 
Sacrament, in the venerable 
Basilica of S. Clemente, which 
had formerly been Cardinal 
Branda’s titular Church, Maso- 
lino achieved his maturest work. 


Fic, 83. Masolino. St. Catherine ; 
disputing with the Pagan Doc- Completely repainted, we may 


tors. Fresco. —S. Clemente, 
Rome. 


still see the legends of St. Cath- 
erine, and a finely theatrical 
Calvary by Masolino, and as well legends of St. Ambrose by 
a follower of Masaccio. Here Masolino’s gift as a story-teller 
is at its best. He has learned to subordinate his accessories, 
and the childlike character of his themes enlists his talent in 
its most engaging aspect. Such a fresco as St. Catherine 
urging the mysteries of the faith before the Roman doctors, 
Figure 83, is well-felt and skilfully composed, and withal most 
flimsily drawn. It is incredible that a man who could do the 
Tabitha in the Brancacci Chapel at forty should have relapsed 
to this level at fifty-five. The evidence of the armor® worn 
by the horsemen in the Calvary proves that that fresco, and 
presumably the entire decoration of the chapel, cannot be 
earlier than 1440, while of course it cannot be later than 
Masolino’s own death in 1447. 

To this later period belongs, I believe, the diptych at Naples 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 127 


which represents two themes rare in early Florentine painting, 
the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Miracle of the Snow, 
Figure 84. The latter scene 
shows Pope Liberius tracing 
the foundations of the Basilica 
of Santa Maria Maggiore which 
were indicated by a miraculous 
snow-fall in midsummer. It is 
delightful as story-telling, and 
some of the minor figures are 
entrancing, as is the landscape. 
Since Michelangelo and Giorgio 
Vasari once admired this pic- 
ture together at Rome, we 
should not grudge it our ad- 
miration. Nor should we fail 
to note the curious defects in 
construction. The heads of the 
attendant figures are set on the 
shoulders like a ball on a post. 
You could blow any of these 


heads off without overtaxing Fic. 84. Masolino. Pope Liberius 
tracing the snow-marked plan of 


your lungs. The picture shows Santa Maria Maggiore.— Naples. 
the utmost of which Masolino 
was capable. It reveals him as lightly touched by the new 
learning and faithful to the old panoramic ideals of narrative 
which had come down from Taddeo Gaddi and the Lorenzetti. 
Logically we should next consider Masaccio, but first we 
may well give an eye to a minor sort of narrative painting 
which worked in the direction of contemporary realism. ‘This 
was domestic painting as distinguished from ecclesiastical or 
civic. In a prosperous Florentine home the chest was the 
most important article of furniture. In the fifteenth century 
its front was pictured with races, pageants, feasts, battles, or 


128 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the new themes from classical mythology. Every patrician 
bride normally received two such painted cassoni to contain 
her trousseau. For example,’ Giovanna di Filippo Aldobrandini 
when she married Tommaso di Berto Fini, in 1418, received — 
two bride chests depicting the races on St. John’s day. A 
complete chest in the Bargello, Florence, shows the riders 
carrying to the Baptistery the palzi, or lengths of brocade 
which were the prizes. The front panel of the companion 
chest is in the Holden Collection, at Cleveland, and com- 
memorates with extraordinary vivacity and fidelity the race 
itself, Figure 85. The winner is just preparing to touch 
the palio which hangs from the ceremonial car at the finish. 
Jesters, policemen, eager women, and impatient urchins who 
pelt the losers make up a remarkable picture of contemporary 
customs. Besides the pictured chests, a well appointed room 
had at the height of a sitter’s shoulder similar but larger 
panels which were called Spalliere. And still higher there 
was, on a still larger scale, what were called cornice panels. 
These too were contemporary or mythological in subject mat- 
ter. Where many a room thus had three courses of pictures 
from the floor to the ceiling there was abundant opportunity 
for the narrative painter and remarkable stimulus to inven- 
tion. The richness and complexity of this household decora- 
tion doubtless influenced all narrative painting, making for 
the sprightliness which dominates the end of the century. 
Besides these chest and wall panels, pictured salvers were 
prepared to celebrate the birth of a patrician child. Such 
wooden salvers were used to convey the congratulatory gifts 
which were offered with appalling promptness to every young 
mother. These Deschi da parto, or birth plates, as the Italians 
called them, bore pictures alluding either to love and beauty 
or to childbirth. One of the earlier mythological salvers is in 
the Bargello and represents the Judgment of Paris. As yet 
the artist is not sufficiently audacious to display the god- 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM — 129 


Fic. 85. School of Uccello. A Horse Race. Detail from a Cassone 
Front. — Cleveland, O. 


Fic. 86. Masaccio. Birth of St. John Baptist. — Desco da Parto, 
Berlin. 


130 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


desses in classical nudity. The most famous of all birth- 
plates may serve as our introduction to the greatest artist 
of the first half of the century, Masaccio. It is in the 
Berlin Museum, the subject is the Birth of St. John the Bap- 
tist, Figure 86, and the date should be about 1422. In the 
excellent proportions of the Renaissance portico, in the gravity 
and mass of the figures, it shows the beginnings of a new 
and more truthful style, based not on previous artistic formu- 
las but on direct and masterful observation of nature. Mr. 
Berenson justly calls it “‘a little giant of a picture.” 

Masaccio ® was born December 21, 1401, at San Giovanni up 
the Arno. His real name was Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di 
Tommaso Guidi. And the slightly slurring character of his 
nickname was apparently given for absent-mindedness, un- 
tidiness, and a certain clumsiness of person. ‘Tradition as late 
as Vasari declared that Masaccio lived in a world of intense 
speculation concerning his art. ‘Contemporary tax-returns 
show that he died deeply in debt and that he never really 
knew how much he owed. ‘Tradition again insists that he 
never troubled to collect payments due him unless his need of 
money were extreme. | 

All the same he was one of the most original minds of all 
ages, and on the formal side, one of the most revolutionary. 
He came to Florence early, probably . learned his elements 
under Masolino, but really drew more from the sculptor 
naturalists of Donatello’s sort. In particular he frequented 
the surly architect Brunellesco and from him learned the new 
art of perspective. January 7, 1422, being: twenty-one years 
old, Masaccio was matriculated in the Druggists’ Guild as a 
licensed painter. By this time he surely had made‘his great 
discovery and“taken his great decision. Reviewing the paint- 
ing of his contemporaries and predecessors, he judged that it 
was all based on unnatural conventions. We can imagine him 
‘in the Spanish Chapel viewing the carefully charted and con- 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 131 


toured and colored groups, and saying impatiently “things 
don’t look like that.” And in truth the older painting at its 
best was a select inventory or formal description of what the 
artist saw, and not a representation. One can imagine Ma- 
saccio exclaiming, as Francisco Goya was to do more than 
three centuries later, “Lines, always lines, I don’t see them 
in nature.” And, as a matter of fact, there are no lines in 
nature, just the meeting of areas variously colored and lighted, 
contrasts of tone which the eye instantaneously interprets 
as form. 

Young Masaccio, then, makes the radical innovation that 
the brush should work according to nature’s laws, distributing 
color and light and dark so as to give the swiftest and truest 
representation of mass and distance. Besides functional light 
and shade, Masaccio introduced into painting the idea of 
aerial perspective. He saw that distant objects diminished 
not merely in size but also in definition. He felt the air as a 
palpable veil between the object and the eye, and he painted 
not simply the object but, as well, its veil. By a swift impulse 
of sheer genius this moody lad fixed ideals of naturalistic 
painting which were to remain until yesterday and the Im- 
pressionists. In fundamental principles Velasquez marks no 
great advance on Masaccio. 

It is only in fresco painting that Masaccio fully reveals 
his powers. So passing with mere mention such panels as The 
Healing of a Demoniac, in the John G. Johnson Collection, 
Philadelphia, the widely scattered parts of the altar-piece for 
the Carmelites at Pisa, dated 1426, and the grim Madonna 
with St. Ann in the Uffizi, the student will best turn 
directly to the Carmelite Church at Florence and enter 
that sanctuary of art, the Chapel of the Brancacci. The 
Church itself was dedicated April 19, 1422. Shortly after 
that date, young Masaccio did in fresco the dedicatory proces- 
sion with many portraits. Its realism produced a profound 


G2 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


impression. Nevertheless it was heedlessly destroyed after a 
century or so. By 1424, according to all probability, Masaccio 
was associated with Masolino in the decoration of the Bran- 
cacci Chapel. It was dedicated to St. Peter, and the prescribed 
subjects were drawn from the “Acts of the Apostles” and ‘‘The 
Golden Legend.” The vaults which contained the four evan- 
gelists and the three lunettes, which depicted The Calling of 
Peter and Andrew, the Tempest-tossed Ship of the Apostles 
on Galilee, and Peter denying his Lord, were by Masolino. 
Unhappily these upper frescoes have been destroyed. The 
Chapel now has only two rows of frescoes in twelve pictures. 
Of these three and a part of a fourth, all in the lower row, are 
certainly by Filippino Lippi, who about 1484 completed the 
chapel, probably with the aid of Masaccio’s designs. Three 
in the upper row, are ascribed by many critics to Masolino. 
According to this view, which is largely based on the opinion 
of Vasari, Masaccio would be responsible for only five pictures 
and most of a sixth. Other critics, whose views I share, be- 
lieve that Masaccio painted eight of the pictures and most of 
a ninth. The difference of opinion, then, concerns three 
pictures which many think unworthy of Masaccio’s genius. 
The problem cannot be fully debated here. The grounds of 
my opinion, which was that of the great Italian critic Caval- 
caselle, will appear as we review the frescoes themselves. 

In general color effect these frescoes are strangely unlike 
their Gothic predecessors. They have nothing of the flower- 
bed gayety of the Spanish Chapel, of Lorenzo Monaco, or of 
Masolino elsewhere. The effect is of a very rich smokiness, a 
kind of monochrome from which only subdued colors emerge. 
Yellow-browns and silvery grays predominate. There are no 
hard contours. The relief is salient, but one form blends in- 
sensibly into another. The edges of the figures are established 
not by lines but by contrast of values, the contour is often 
completely lost. The strong assertion of light and dark in a 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 133 


few structural planes builds out the forms from an investing 
shadow. Indeed the whole chapel recalls not the Gothic fresco 
painters, but such far later artists as Velasquez, Rembrandt, 
or even Whistler. The method of the painter, whoever he 
was, is completely modern, and uniform throughout the 
chapel. He sacrifices minute definition to generalizations for 
mass; and color, to emphatic construction in light and shade. 
To obtain relief in the figures and distance in the backgrounds 
is the main concern. It is in intention a luminist art and a 
modelling art. The procedure is nearly uniform throughout 
the Brancacci Chapel, though it grows abler from fresco to 
fresco. It is a method that Masolino never commanded, not 
at Castiglione d’Olona ten years later, nor still ten years later 
at San Clemente, Rome. Hence I can only believe that the 
admitted inequalities in the Brancacci Chapel merely repre- 
sent the swift development of Masaccio’s genius, and certain 
interruptions in the work itself. 

The first fresco, in the nave alongside, the entrance of the 
chapel, depicts our first parents at the moment of the Tempta- 
tion in the Garden of Eden, Figure 87. It is stilted and awk- 
ward, yet withal dignified. The theme, which indeed has sel- 
dom been a happy one for any artist, has not greatly interested 
the painter. He has made it an occasion for studying the 
nude. We have what the modern student calls an academy. 
As such, it is able. The construction is highly simplified and 
is wholly in masses of light and dark, the contour 
is freely effaced. The mystery of background foliage is well 
suggested, the placing of the head of the serpent between the 
tree and the figures is a perfect example of the new art of 
aerial perspective. No painter but Masaccio had even the 
notion of such an effect at this moment. Technically the 
handling of this detail is just the same as that of the vastly 
more beautiful angel in the Expulsion from Eden, Figure 
gt. Finally, the impassive mask of the Eve is identical with 


134 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


that of the Virgin, in Masaccio’s panel in the Ufhzi. We 
presumably have to do with an experimental phase of Masac- 
cio about the year 1423-5. About that time Masolino prob- 
ably was called to Buda to work for the extraordinary 


Fic. 87. Masaccio. The Tempta- Fic. 91. Masaccio. The Expul- 
tion. — Brancacci Chapel. sion. — Brancacci Chapel. 


Florentine soldier of fortune, Filippo Scolari, better known by 
his nickname of Pippo Spano. If Vasari is right, Masaccio 
had been required to prove his ability to continue the work 
by painting a St. Paul near the bellcord of the Church, in 
competition with a St. Jerome by Masolino. Both are lost. 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 135 


However that be, Masaccio probably succeeded to the work 
in 1425, his twenty-fourth year, and the next fresco after the 
Adam and Eve may well have been the adjoining subjects of 


Fic. 88. Masaccio. St. Peter raising Tabitha and healing the Cripple.— 
Brancacci Chapel. 


Peter raising Tabitha from the Dead and healing a Cripple, 
Figure 88. As a whole the composition is somewhat marred 
by inadvertences and afterthoughts. It shows the influence 
of Masolino in the trite and conventional gestures of the 
mourners about the bier, and in certain strained facial ex- 
pressions, notably that of the turbaned bystander. Such 
survivals are precisely what one would expect in a young 
painter just emancipated from his master. ‘The entirely 
Masolino-like pair of strollers in the centre seem to be due to 
an afterthought. The first intention is registered in the un-_ 
naturally straight back of St. Peter’s companion, in the centre. 
The fresco was apparently to have been cut into two compart- 
ments by a pilaster at that point.2 When the plan was aban- 
doned in favor of putting two episodes in one space, the two un- 
related figures had to be added to All space and provide a transi- 
tion. Oneisa little ashamed of pointing out small defects in what 
in all essentials is a noble and impassioned work. ‘Technically 
there is nothing better in the Chapel than the establishing of 
the city background. It has scale, admirable atmospheric 


136 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


placing, dignity and pictorial significance. How anybody who 
knows Masolino’s niggling and haphazard treatment of such 
architectural features at Castiglione d’Olona can imagine that 
he had earlier created this grandiose setting remains a mys- 
tery to me. Even more remarkable are the gravity and gran- 
deur of the Peter and the Tabitha. Here we are reminded 
of Giotto. Masaccio must often have pored over the Stories 
of St. John in Santa Croce, and while he by no means adopted 
Giotto’s shorthand indications for mass, he did adopt Giotto’s 
sense for classic dignity, beautifully calculated order, and 
moderation. As we continue through these remarkable fres- 
coes we shall see continually that the quite ruthless innovator 
that was Masaccio was also a reverent traditionalist. The 
particular form of his art was settled between nature and 
himself, as Leonardo da Vinci later justly observed; the spirit 
of his art derived mostly from Giotto. It was highly impor- 
tant for the whole ongoing of art in Italy that so revolutionary 
a spirit was tempered by the finest respect for the great classic 
tradition. And in this great fresco of St. Peter’s miracles 
one may see how a quite homely and drastic realism can 
be invested with abstract power and dignity. How different 
it all is from the small and often charming vivacity which 
Masolino displays at Castiglione d’Olona and at Rome. 

Like the Temptation, the Tabitha is more linear and color- 
ful than the other frescoes of the Chapel. The painter has 
not quite mastered the radically new method of construction 
in light and shade. Thus there is a technical break between 
the Tabitha and the frescoes on the back wall, which are in a 
more developed manner. We may assume an interruption in 
the work. Indeed we need not assume it, for records prove 
that for most of the year 1426 Masaccio was occupied with 
the great altar-piece for the Carmelites at Pisa. On October 
15, 1426, Masaccio solemnly engaged not to do any other 
work until the altar-piece should be finished. We may believe 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 137 


then that the work in the Brancacci Chapel was taken up 
anew towards 1427. 

The four frescoes on the back wall, which are divided into 
two groups by the window, are the first of the new work. Of 
these the most remarkable is St. Peter Baptizing, Figure 89. 
The drawing is magnificent. Light and dark, without aid of 
the line, create so many bosses and pits which not merely 
establish form but suggest the gravest emotions. A few well 
chosen and well placed figures give the sense of a multitude. 
Mountains tower in gigantic scale, one feels the run of the 
little river from its distant source amid high ravines. The 
simplest modulations of light and dark, so many sweeps of a 
broad brush, establish the constructional planes of the figures 
and the mountains. All the early Italian writers mark with 
wondering admiration the expressiveness of the shivering man 
waiting his turn at the left. It is the smallest merit of the 
picture. Masaccio in this great composition commands a 
homely and impressive majesty, and therein shows himself 
‘true successor of Giotto, but he also reveals a power of syn- 
thesis entirely modern and hardly excelled since his day. 
One has only to turn to Masolino’s Baptism at Castiglione 
d’Olona, Figure 82, with its niggling insistence on details, to 
appreciate the gulf between the master and the pupil. 

Across the window from Masaccio’s Baptism is St. Peter 
Preaching. The same towering, mountain background is 
used. The somewhat linear treatment of the faces has led 
Mr. Berenson, with other critics, to ascribe this fresco to 
Masolino. It seems to me merely less strenuously seen, 
because the subject offers little inspiration. Masaccio has 
lent the theme real dignity, and, in the eager face of the nun 
at the front of the audience achieves an unusual sweetness. 
Technically there are good but not compelling reasons for 
supposing this fresco may have been done among the first, 
about 1425. 


138 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


The lower scenes at the back of the Chapel are, at your 
right, St. Peter healing the Sick, by the mere fall of his 
shadow and, at the left, St. Peter giving Alms. In both 
cases we have Florentine street scenes with a classic air 
lent by the solemn figures of the apostles. We feei 
the figures as far or near, and the air that veils them. 
There is great intentness in the poor folk, and a rugged im- 
personality in St. Peter and St. James. They are not in- 
dulging personal compassion so much as fulfilling a divine 
mission. Again the combination of a drastic realism with a 
stylistic majesty is what makes these frescoes unique. They 
contain vivid portraits, among these the traditional portrait 
of Masolino, a gentle, heavy, middle-aged face, bearded, and 
crowned with a sort of tuque— just the man to have con- 
ceived the charming but loosely organized compositions at 
Castiglione d’Olona. 

What Masaccio looked like we may see in the upper fresco 
on the right wall. He is the alert and determined figure im- 
personating St. Thomas, at the left of the group. The story 
of the Tribute Money, Figure 90, is one of the grandest 
creations of European art.. If, as Leonardo da Vinci asserts, 
the highest task of painting is to show by the pose and ges- 
tures of the body the emotions of the soul, this is one of the 
greatest paintings. It is remarkable for the dignity lent to an 
apparently unpromising theme. The story is simply that 
Christ is required to pay the denarius when there is no money 
in the company. By a miracle Peter finds the coin in the 
mouth of a fish and pays it to the tax-gatherer. How the 
creative imagination has magnified this slender theme! Ma- 
saccio has formed a group of potent and formidable indivi- 
duals, these simple men are fit to shake a world. He has shown 
them in a moment in which discouragement and determina- 
tion blend. A technicality threatens to check the salvation of 
the world. He has discriminated between the assured au- 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 139 


thority of the Christ and the wrathful energy of St. Peter. 
He has invested the majestic forms with massive draperies 


Fic. 90. Masaccio. The Tribute Money. — Brancacci Chapel. 


Fic. 89. Masaccio. St. Peter Fic.92. Masaccio. The Trinity, 
Baptizing. — Brancacci Chapel. Fresco. — Santa Maria Novella. 
grandly disposed in simple folds. He has given even the tax- 
gatherer the grace of a Roman athlete. Finally he has set 
the austere company before a noble river plain upon which 


140 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


press the slopes of lofty mountains, while the undulating 
crest of a remoter range almost bars off the sky. All objects, 
human and inanimate, bear firmly on the ground and are 
wrapped in an enveloping atmosphere. In the quality and 
arrangement of the figures, it all derives from Giotto; in the 
vastness of the scale, the introduction of mystery and dis- 
tance, it is wholly Masaccio’s own. Vasari rightly praised the 
harmony and discretion with which these powerful assertions 
of form are made, and sees here the beginnings of the modern 
style of painting. 

The organizing power of Masaccio is at its height in the 
Tribute Money. His emotional intensity is fully involved 
only in the Expulsion from Eden, Figure 91, the adjoining 
fresco in the nave of the church. Before the sword of a se- 
renely inexorable angel, Adam and Eve stalk forth into the 
unknown. Their bodies cringe as they move, with shame and 
grief. An ominous light reduces their bodies to so many pits 
of shadow and bosses of light. Drawing of such accurate 
economy will only rarely reappear in the world, in Leonardo 
da Vinci, in Rembrandt, in Honoré Daumier. The desperate 
emotion is well contained within the oblong, in a monumental 
balance. Remorse in the two first sinners has its shades. 
The man’s head is pressed into his hands in an attempt at 
restraint, while Eve’s is thrown back in anguished ululation. 
The high emotional pressure is new, and symptomatic, and 
significantly it 1s contained within monumental bounds. The 
Italian Renaissance in its striving for expressiveness will 
rarely fail to keep expression noble. ‘The ingrained classicism 
of the Florentine point of view is never more favorably repre- 
sented than in a subject like this which seeks a maximum emo- 
tion on terms of order and lucidity. 

What remains of Masaccio is in a sense anticlimax. Very 
stately is the fresco in this chapel, of the Resurrection of the 
Prince of Tyre and St. Peter enthroned. The beauty is 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM = IgqI 


that of fine arrangement and characterization. The grace- 
ful nude boy and about ten distinguished figures behind 
him were added to the composition, presumably from Ma- 
saccio’s designs, full fifty years later. They are the work 
of Filippino Lippi, who also added some portraits at the left 
of this fresco. He also filled the three unpainted panels, in 
an excellent imitation of Masaccio’s style. Evidently Ma- 
saccio was called rather abruptly to his last sojourn at Rome. 
For the fresco of the Raising of the Boy could have been 
finished in a fortnight. 

I have omitted a fine fresco of a Pieta in the Collegiate 
Church at Empoli, though I believe it to be a splendid example 
of Masaccio’s early style, and I can only mention for its 
magnificent architectural setting in Brunellesco’s new style the 
fresco of the Trinity in Santa Maria Novella, Figure 92. 
It is of his latest manner and of extraordinary gravity and 
mass. 

In 1428, being only twenty-six years old, Masaccio drops out 
of sight at Rome. Some report that he was poisoned, others 
that he was slain in a street brawl. We really know nothing 
about it. What we do know 1s that in the recorded history of 
art no painter had achieved so greatly in so short a time. 
Within six short years Masaccio created that method of 
painting which stood uncontested till the advent of luminism 
only forty years ago. And he not merely illustrated the 
method of construction in light and dark, painting in atmos- 
pheric values rather than in lines and charted areas, but 
he also expressed in the new technic both the noblest tradi- 
tional emotions as also. poignant new emotions quite his 
own. In one superb aggressive he had moved three genera- 
tions into the future. For a hundred years the most intelli- 
gent and ambitious artists in Florence as a matter of course 
studied and copied in the Brancacci Chapel to form their 
style. Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michel- 


142 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


angelo, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto thus paid homage to the 
untidy youth from Castel San Giovanni, and even the icono- 
clasts of today, for whom Leonardo da Vinci and his peers 
are scarcely artists at all, envy the gravity and force of Masac- 
cio. He is the real father of modern painting, which is most 
true to itself when it tempers an ardent curiosity as regards 
natural appearances with a respect for the great traditions 
of moderation and taste. 

Masaccio’s successors, very wisely, did not closely imitate 
him. They saw he was an unsafe and unapproachable model. 
By a swift impulse of genius, and apparently without 
analytical study of anatomy and topography, he had mastered 
the broad effects that register form. Details he neglected. 
He gives the action of hands and feet, not their articula- 
tions, the scale of landscape and not its component parts. 
For men of lesser genius, these shortcuts were dangerous. 
While using Masaccio as inspiration, they had to verify his 
discoveries through analytical studies before those innova- 
tions could become generally available. The process of veri- 
fication and minute research occupied about fifty years 
and may be said to be complete with the maturity of Leon- 
ardo da Vinci, say about the date of The Last Supper, 1498. 

The successors of Masaccio may be divided into two groups 
as they quietly adopted and popularized the immediately 
available part of his discoveries, or strenuously carried his 
work forward. ‘To the moderate progressive group belong 
Fra Filippo Lippi and Benozzo Gozzoli, and still later Ghir- 
landaio; the experimentalists are birds of quite a different 
feather. f 

These Florentine realists may be divided into two genera- 
tions. The first asserts itself before the middle of the fif- 
teenth century, and is trained chiefly under the influence of 
such sculptors as Donatello, Brunellesco and Ghiberti. These 
painters work at the problem of light and shade, anatomy, 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 143 


and perspective, accepting in their art the guidance of sculp- 
ture. Ihe second generation of realists come to their own 
after the middle of the century, are mostly trained as silver- 


Fic. 93. Paolo Uccello. Battle of Cavalry. — Louvre. 


smiths, and work at the new technic of oil painting, at land- 
scape and at the figure in action. Both groups relatively 
neglected the important matter of composition. Most of 
the realists sacrificed pictorial effect the better to master de- 
tail, but they also accumulated that vast body of knowledge 
upon which rests the glory of the High Renaissance, and no- 
body can understand the progress of Florentine painting 
without following sympathetically their great effort. 

Of the first generation, the quaintest figure is Paolo Uccello. 
Born in 1397, he soon gave himself fanatically to the study 
of the new science of perspective, especially to feats of fore- 
shortening. His pictures are so many experiments and have 
a petrified inertness. Yet at his best he commands dignity 
and a considerable decorative power. About the year 1435 
he painted for the Medici palace several battle scenes, three 
of which are respectively in the Louvre, Figure 93, National 
Gallery and Uffizi. The last, representing the Florentine victory 
of San Romano,'shows the style. The forms are squared, in a 


144° HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


fashion anticipating modern Cubism, in order to simplify 
the problem of placing and foreshortening. Corpses and 
lances are deliberately pointed at the spectator to offer so 
many problems in perspective. The landscape is minute 
and topographical. The decorative coloring is bold and origi- 
nal with interesting dissonances of oranges, russets, and greens. 
It is quite splendid after the unreal fashion of a tapestry. 

Paolo’s masterpiece is the equestrian portrait of Sir John 
Hawkwood, Figure 94, the English soldier of fortune and 
occasional captain of the Florentine army, which is in the 
Cathedral. It is painted in gray-green touched with color, 
and simulates a tomb. ‘The date is 1437. Since Roman times 
no equestrian monument of equal dignity had been created, 
and one is inclined to suspect that Uccello profited by pre- 
liminary studies of Donatello, his close friend, which later 
developed into the superb Gattamelata statue at Padua. 
Ucello has a lighter vein illustrated by furniture panels at 
Oxford, (a Hunt), at Paris, and Vienna, (St. George and 
the Dragon), but his most ambitious work is the decoration 
of the lunettes in the great cloister of Santa Maria Novella. 
The stories are drawn from the Old Testament, were started 
by Paolo, about the year 1446, and continued by several 
assistants. [he medium was gray-green, terra verde, and the 
place accordingly is called the Green Cloister. Uccello’s 
manner may be best sensed in the fresco of the Deluge, in 
which the endeavor to set problems in perspective clashes 
unhappily with the desire to present a scene of terror. The 
figures are felt one at a time, there is little relation be- 
tween them, and the picture has small merit apart from 
its probity in the rendering of details and a sort of abstract 
earnestness. 

Uccello lived on till 1475, an indulged eccentric, ignored 
by the public and ridiculed by his greater friends. His zeal 
for perspective was unabated with age, and many a night 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 145 


Fic. 94. Paolo Uccello, ‘Tomb 


ee a ele Fic. 96. Andrea del Castagno. 


Portrait of a young man. — 


}. P. Morgan Coll., N.Y. 


se ae 


Fic. 95. Andrea del Castagno. Fic. 97. Andrea del Castagno. 
Pippo Spano. — Sant’ Apollonia. Tomb portrait of Niccold da 
Tolentino. — Cathedral. 


146 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


his much-tried wife lost sleep as he murmured in the small 
hours — “‘O! thou dear perspective!” 

Far the most powerful of these early realists is Andrea 
del Castagno.” His aggressive and truculent forms savor 
of Donatello without Donatello’s fineness. He searches the 
secrets of anatomy, locates and describes the muscles and 
sinews, depicts a world ruled by force of arm. Although he 
builds in heavy shadows, after Masaccio’s fashion, he re- 
tains an outline that vibrates with nervous strength. His 
truthful sternness still wins approbation. He was born about 
1390. We meet him first in full maturity, perhaps about 
the year 1435, as decorator of the Villa of the Pandolfini. 
To strengthen the ambition of that proud race, he painted 
in their great hall nine figures of heroes and heroines noted 
in war or in the arts. Recently transferred to the Convent 
of Sant’ Apollonia, which already had a Last Supper and 
a Calvary by Andrea, you may see the austere forms of Dante, . 
Petrarch, and Boccaccio, of Esther, Queen Thomyris and 
the Cumean Sibyl, of the warrior Farinata degli Uberti, 
Niccol6 Accaiuoli, and Filippo Scolari. This potent and 
melancholy figure of Pippo Spano, Figure 95, whom we al- 
ready know as the patron of Masolino, at Buda, is the 
most striking representation that painting has given us of 
those masterful Italian soldiers of fortune who managed war 
and government for the less advanced nations. Pippo Spano 
had gone to Buda as a clerk and had quickly become a 
eeneralissimo, Obergespann of Temesvar. For King Sigis- 
mund of Hungary he stemmed the Turkish onslaught, did 
much to save Central Europe for Christianity. As he stands 
thoughtfully confident, holding the scimitar, the weapon of 
his foes, he is the beau ideal of that Italy soon to be immortal- 
ized by Machiavelli, in which virtue meant successful force, 
and both were on sale. A man’s portrait, Figure 96, in the 
collection of Mr. J. P. Morgan, New York, has an even more 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 147 


sinister intensity. Equally remarkable for its heroic aggres- 
siveness is the young David adorning a tournament shield 
in the Widener Collection, Figure 70. 

In the fresco of the Crucifixion, now in S. Apollonia, Andrea 
reveals great knowledge linked to tragic expressiveness. No 
tenderness veils the appalling theme. An athlete suffers 
stoically while his mother and cousin shudder with grief. 
Of its ruthless kind it is a great masterpiece and quite un- 
forgettable. 

In 1456 Andrea painted for the Cathedral the equestrian 
portrait of the partisan leader, Niccolo da Tolentino, Figure 
97. It is a companion piece to Uccello’s Hawkwood, and 
like it simulates statuary, in monochrome. It is more martial 
and restless, in the toss of the horse’s head and the snap of 
the rider’s cloak. It suggests not ceremonious dignity, but 
noise and impending action. It may very powerfully have 
influenced Verrocchio twenty years later when he modelled 
for Venice the Colleoni statue. 

The truculence of Andrea’s manner led to a false and 
scandalous tradition, promulgated by Vasari, that he slew 
his rival Domenico Veneziano out of jealousy. As a matter 
of prosaic record, Domenico Veneziano survived his alleged 
assassin’s death, in 1457, by all of four years. 

Domenico came down from Venice somewhere about 1438 
and brought with him a new technical method. He finished 
the pictures, which he began in tempera, with veilings or 
glazes in an oil or varnish medium. He avoided the old frank 
Gothic coloring in favor of pale tonalities which oddly fore- 
cast our modern open-air school. The new method permitted 
of bolder brushwork and successive over paintings. For the 
moment it wrought havoc with the old conventional beauty, 
but it offered the painter new resources and refinements, 
and eventually made possible the triumphs of Leonardo and 
Titian. | 


148 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


On the whole, Domenico is merely the shadow of a great 
name, for we have only a handful of works by him, and those 
perhaps unrepresentative. The altar-piece of St. Lucy, in 


Fic. 98. Domenico Veneziano. 
Madonna with St. Lucy. — 
Uffizi. 


the Uffizi, Figure 98, is novel only in its acid and original 
dissonance of deep rose and pale green. The rugged St. John 
the Baptist shows an attempt to obtain force of modelling 
without exaggerating the shadows. This tendency persists 
in such disciples of Domenico as Baldovinetti and Piero della 
Francesca, and rules in Florence until Leonardo’s definitive 
application of Masaccio’s methods. In the profile portraiture 
of the period Domenico was a master, as shown in an ad- 
mirable female portrait in Mrs. 'John L. Gardner’s collec- 
tion, Figure 99. Many similar heads, which we can hardly 
ascribe to particular masters, seem to derive from Domenico. 
One of the most beautiful is in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum 
at Milan. All of Domenico’s pupils and imitators excel 
in a minute and topographical style of landscape of which 
he was probably the inventor. It may be studied in Piero 
della Francesca, in the Pollaiuoli, in Baldovinetti, and there 
is even a trace of it in the spacious Alpine background of 


the Mona Lisa. 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 149 


Domenico died in 1461. By that time Florentine realism 
was emerging from its first phase, and was beginning to in- 
vestigate with its new resources the facts of motion. It was 
the moment, too, when certain realists sought to regain the 


Fic. 99. Domenico Veneziano. Fic. 100. A. Baldovinetti. Ma- 
Portrait of a Girl.— Coll. Mrs. donna. — Louvre. 
Fohn L. Gardner, Boston. 


grace which had largely been sacrificed in the struggle for 
sheer knowledge. 

Alesso Baldovinetti" well represents this moment in a 
lovely Madonna in the Louvre, Figure 100, which shows in 
perfection the new topographical landscape and that juvenile 
graciousness which was to be the staple of the coming genera- 
tion of artists. Baldovinetti was born in 1425, and this love- 
liest of all his pictures may represent him about the year 1460. 
He had been an assistant of Fra Angelico, but in a long career, 
he died in 1499, he fell behind the times. He taught Domenico 
Ghirlandaio his elements, and profoundly influenced Andrea 
Verrocchio and Antonio Pollaiuolo. Thus he keeps a sure if 
modest place in the progress of Florentine art. 


150 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


In this chapter we have been dealing in a rough way with 
the Florence of Cosimo de’ Medici. Under his astute and 
delicate rule from behind the political scenes, Florence de- 
veloped in wealth, splendor, and worldliness. The old piety 
was waning or assuming merely esthetic forms. Greek 
studies were beginning to pave the way for an enlightened 
and sceptical humanism and, withal, a revival of the pagan 
sense of beauty. And when the new beauty came, it was 
greatfully mindful of those who had made it possible. Leon- 
ardo da Vinci lauds Masaccio. He expresses the immense 
debt that art owes to the first conscious realists. ‘They did 
good and harm, but to Florence at least they opened the only 
way of progress. For whatever art may be elsewhere, in Flor- 
ence it was fruitful only as it was intellectualized. Good 
theory, good practice — such was the creed imposed by the 
early realists and later formulated by their great scion, Leon- 
ardo. I do not offer it as a universal formula, but in these 
days when pure spontaneity —that is no theory — and 
false theory divide the field, the old Florentine credo is at 
least worthy of consideration by all who produce art and by 
all who love it. Baldovinetti was untouched by these new 
stirrings which are associated with the rule of Lorenzo de’ 
Medici, but he dimly forecasts the grace that was soon to 
come. ‘This new spirit and its exponents must be the theme 
of our next chapter. 


Sei a te 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM ISI 


ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER III 


VASARI ON MASACCIO 


Vasari’s general estimate of Masaccio’s importance is still sound. 

“With regard to the good manner of painting, we are indebted above 
all to Masaccio, seeing that he, as one desirous of acquiring fame, per- 
seived that painting is nothing but the counterfeiting of all the things 
of nature, vividly and simply, with drawing and with colours, even as 
she produced them for us . . . This truth, I say, being recognized by 
Masaccio, brought it about that by means of continuous study he 
learned so much that he can be numbered among the first who cleared 
away, in a great measure, the hardness, the imperfections, and the 
difficulties of the art, and that he gave a beginning to beautiful at- 
titudes, movements, liveliness, and vivacity, and to a certain relief 
truly characteristic and natural; which no painter up to his time had 
done .. . And he painted his works with good unity and softness, 
harmonizing the flesh-colours of the heads and of the nudes with the 
colours of the draperies, which he delighted to make with few folds 
and simple, as they are in life and nature .. . 

“For this reason that chapel has been frequented continually up 
to our own day [1554] by innumerable draughtsmen and masters; 
and there still are therein some heads so life-like and so beautiful, 
that it may truly be said that no master of that age approached so 
nearly as this man did to the moderns. His labours, therefore, deserve 
infinite praise, and above all because he gave form in his art to the 
beautiful manner of the times.” 


Vasari then names twenty-five artists who studied Masaccio’s fres- 
-coes. From De Vere’s translation of the Lives, Vol. II, p. 189, 90. 


LEONARDO DA VINCI ON MASACCIO 


Leonardo da Vinci uses Masaccio as the example of a painter who 
goes to nature rather than to other men’s painting. 


That Painting declines and deteriorates from age to age, when 
painters have no standard but painting already done. 


“Hence the painter will produce pictures of small merit if he takes 
for his standard the pictures of others. But if he will study from natural 
objects he will bear good fruit; as was seen in the painters after the 
Romans who always imitated each other, and so their art declined 


E62 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


from age to age. After these came Giotto the Florentine who — not 
content with imitating the works of Cimabue; his master — being 
born in the mountains and in a solitude inhabited only by goats and 
such beasts, and being guided by nature to his art, began by drawing 
on the rocks the movements of the goats of which he was keeper. And 
thus he began to draw all the animals which were to be found in the 
country, and in such wise that after much study he excelled not only 
all the masters of his time but all those of many bygone ages.” 
“Afterwards this art declined again, because everyone imitated the 
pictures that were already done; thus it went on from century to cen- 
tury until Tomaso, of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio, showed by his 
perfect works how those who take for their standard any one but nature 
— the mistress of all masters — weary themselves in vain.” 
J. P. Richter ‘‘ Literary Works of L. da V.,” Vol. I. p. 660. 


But Leonardo approves also imitation of antiquity (Richter, Vol. II, 
{{1445). ‘‘ The imitation of antique things is better than that of modern 
things.”” He would probably have sanctioned Masaccio’s devout 
study of Giotto. The warning is against slavish imitation of immedi- 
ate predecessors. 


VASARI ON PAOLO UCCELLO 


The admirable and self sacrificing ardor of these first realists is best 
exemplified in the case of Paolo Uccello. 


“For the sake of these investigations [in perspective] he kept him- 
self in seclusion and almost a hermit, having little intercourse with 
anyone, and staying weeks and months in his house without shaving 
himself. And although those were difficult and beautiful problems, if 
he had spent that time in the study of figures, he would have brought | 
them to absolute perfection; for even so he made them with passing 
good draughtsmanship. But, consuming his time in these researches, 
he remained throughout his whole life more poor than famous; where- 
fore the sculptor Donatello, who was very much his friend, said to him 
very often—when Paolo showed him Mazzocchi (facetted head- 
fillets) with pointed ornaments, and squares drawn in perspective 
from diverse aspects; spheres with seventy-two diamond-shaped facets, 
with wood-shavings wound round sticks on each facet; and other fan- 
tastic devices on which he spent and wasted his time — ‘Ah, Paolo, 
this perspective of thine makes thee abandon the substance for the 
shadow; those are things that are only useful to men who work at the in- 


MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 153 


laying of wood, seeing that they fill their borders with chips and shav- 
ings, with spirals both round and square, and with other similar things.’ ” 


Vasari, in Schele de Vere’s translation; Vol. II. p. 132, 3. 


AN APPRAISAL OF BALDOVINETTI’S FRESCOES 


Here I may illustrate a common practice of the times in an 
appraisal of Baldovinetti’s frescoes in the choir of the Trinita by 
fellow artists including Benozzo Gozzoli, Cosimo Rosselli and Pietro 
Perugino. 


“In the name of God — on the 19 of January 1496 (n. s. ’97) 

We Benozzo di Lese, painter; and Piero di Cristofano da Castel 
della Pieve, painter; and Cosimo di Lorenzo Rosselli, painter, chosen 
by Alesso di Baldovinetto Baldovinetti, painter, to see and judge and set 
a price on — empowered by a contract which said Alesso has with M. 
Bongianni de’Gianfigliazzi and his heirs — a chapel pictured in Santa 
Trinita of Florence — that is the choir of the said church, having seen, 
all together and agreeing, having examined all the costs of lime, azure, 
gold and all other colours, scaffolds and everything else, including his 
work, we judge from all this that the aforesaid Alesso should have 
one thousand broad gold florins. 

“‘And for clearness and truth of the said judgment I Cosimo di 
Lorenzo aforesaid have made this writing with my own hand this 
aforesaid day, and so I judge; and here at the foot they will sign with 
their own hands that they are agreed with what is above written, and 
so judge. 

Benozzo di Lese &c. 

I Piero Perugino &c. 


Translated from Herbert Horne’s edition of Alesso’s Ricordi in Bur- 
lington Magazine, Vol. II. (1903) p- 383. 


At 


Meer telerO LIPPI- AND THE NEW 
NARRATIVE STYLE 


CHAPTER IV 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND THE NEW 
NARRATIVE STYLE 


After Masaccio two tendencies, — towards prettiness and vivacious narrative; 
towards strenuous research — Fra Filippo Lippi celebrant of Gay Flor- 
ence — Benozzo Gozzoli and Pageantry — Antonio Pollaiuolo and human 
dynamics — Piero della Francesca and impersonal observation of ap- 
pearances — Dissolving tendencies in the new panoramic style — illus- 
trated by the early frescoes in the Sistine Chapel — Perugino’s return to 
simple symmetries — The Cassone painters once more — Domenico 
Ghirlandaio and spectacular narrative — His portraits— The charm 
of the slighter narrative style. 


In the last chapter we have dealt chiefly with innovators 
and reformers. Whether in art or life, these are not always 
the most agreeable companions. The charming person 1s 
generally a traditionalist, or a tactful profiteer by other men’s 
discoveries. So the popular favor has ever gone not to the 
strenuous artists of Masaccio’s type or Castagno’s, but to 
devotees of the charm of common folk and things, like Fra 
Filippo Lippi; to masters of pageantry and incident, like 
Benozzo Gozzoli; or to chroniclers of the festal richness 
of Florence in her short prime, like Domenico Ghirlandaio. 
These artists, while by no means giants, are highly representa- 
tive of their times. They one and all aimed to please, and 
amply succeeded. Their importance in the history of art 1s 
rather slight; in the history of taste, on the contrary, they 
are very important. And it is from that point of view that 
we shall do well to consider them. These three masters cover 
the last two-thirds of the fifteenth century. They exemplify 

157 


158 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the taste of the new-rich merchants who flourished under 
the benevolent tyranny of the Medici. 

Alongside of these gracious and adaptable spirits, struggled 
the continuers of the realistic reform — Antonio Pollaiuolo, 
who first systematically studied the anatomy and dynamics 
of the human form; Andrea Verrocchio, who imbued accuracy 
and power with grace; Sandro Botticelli, who explored soli- 
tary roads of sentiment and wrought out of the ruggedness 
of the realists strange forms of recondite beauty. At all times 
we find the endeavor for artistic adaptation running along- 
side the passion for sheer discovery, and producing its own 
triumphs. It is this complicated, dual process which makes 
the richness and continuity of the Early Renaissance. If 
we compare the seventy-two years between the beginnings of 
Masaccio, say 1422, and the death of Ghirlandaio, in 1494, 
with the century and a half preceding, we shall note an ex- 
traordinary acceleration both of production and progress. 
There are no gaps and rests; each generation makes its dis- 
coveries and cashes them in. Architecture, sculpture, classi- 
cal scholarship develop with a whirling rapidity which by 
no means precludes taste and reflection. In an almost reck- 
less expansion of emotion, experience, and creative activity, 
Florence keeps her head though she risks losing her soul. 
And the true harbinger of this intoxicating new life is one 
who often lost his head and whose soul remains enigmatic, 
the wayward and fascinating painter-monk, Fra_ Filippo 
Lippi. ! 

He was the first Italian painter to care greatly for the look 
of everyday people. Born about the year 1400, he was early 
orphaned and thrust willy-nilly into the Carmelite Order. 
As a young man he must have seen Masaccio painting those 
titanic designs in the Brancacci Chapel. From Masaccio 
Fra Filippo learned his trade, rather by observation than by 
direct instruction. But he cared for far different things. 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 159 


He really follows the tender narrative vein of Lorenzo Monaco. 
To the grandeur of miracle-working apostles, he preferred the 


Fic. 102. Fra Filippo Lippi. Madonna in Adoration. — Berlin. 


gentle quaintness of the old man who kept the shops and 
practiced the trades of Florence; to the matronly dignity 
of Masaccio’s women, he preferred the shy and alluring sweet- 
ness of the Florentine girls about him; to the majestic sweeps 
of mountain and valley in Masaccio, the intimate appeal of 
the cypress groves, the little ledges and trickling springs. 
In technique, too, he avoided the bold short-cuts of his master. 


160 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


He hung on to the line, loved details, described everything 
with solicitude. It is an art of amiability and curiosity, gener- 
ally disregardful of that grand 
style towards which in her greater 
moments Florence ever aspired. 
The advent of Fra Filippo in the 
Florence of Giotto and Orcagna 
and Masaccio, was like that of 
an irresistibly attractive youth in 
a solemn company. He loosened 
everything up. Unconsciously he 
demoralized the assembly; for two 
generations the art of Florence 
was to be boyish and _ girlish. 
That is its charm and its limita- 
tion, and the difference between 


A ce ae Cine. ae the Early Renaissance and the 


Golden Age will be largely that 
the latter will prefer to depict with the gravity of maturity a 
world that has grown up. 

One of the earliest and most exquisite panels by Fra Filippo 
was painted shortly after 1435 for the private chapel of Cosimo 
de’ Medici’s new palace, and is now at Berlin. The theme, 
young Mary kneeling before her Divine Infant, Figure 102, 
is a favorite with the Florentine artists of this century. Per- 
haps no one has conceived it more delightfully than Fra Filippo. 
The picture gets its peculiar sweetness from the gentle, girl- 
ish figure of the Maiden Mother, its quality of romance from 
the ledgy background watered by springs and spangled with 
modest flowers, its tang of reality from the chubby and stolid 
Christchild and the boyish St. John the Baptist. You could 
almost see such a thing today along the shaded upper Mensola 
when a young Florentine mother has taken the children for 
a Sunday picnic. For the old Gothic conventions and the 


Peart eeO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 161 


bare majesty of Masaccio’s painting, Fra Filippo has sub- 
stituted the everyday joys of a feeling eye, and the charm of 
closely-observed little things. 

In most of his pictures this familiar quality is marked. 


Fic. 104. Fra Filippo Lippi. Coronation of the Virgin. — Uffizt. 


His saints are not types, but people of the Florentine middle 
class. An early Madonna in the Ufhzi, Figure 103, shows the 
Virgin as a slight girl with her ash-blond locks elaborately 
dressed and braided for a holiday. She is almost overborne. 
by her sturdy Son, an exacting brute, one may imagine, 
while the attendant angel is a grinning street Arab caught 
in the intervals of mischief. Such pictures with their win- 
someness and actuality worked powerfully to break down both 
the old Gothic decorum and the new sublimity of Masaccio. 

To grasp the novelty of Fra Filippo’s most famous panel 
‘picture, The Coronation of the Virgin, painted for the nuns 
of Sant’ Ambrogio in 1441, Figure 104, and now in the Ufhzi, 
one has only to recall the devoutly formal and simple version 
of the subject which Fra Angelico painted about the same 


162 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


time for the convent of San Marco. The composition of Fra 
Filippo, on the contrary, is radiantly informal. We breathe 
the air of the commencement at a very nice girls’ school, 
with adoring friends and proud relatives moving at the edges 
of the ceremony. Indeed God the Father has merely the air 
of a benevolent trustee or visiting minor celebrity awarding 
a prize to the best girl. It is all like the crowning of a Rosiére 
in a French village. Robert Browning in one of the most 
admirable poems in ‘““Men and Women” makes Fra Filippo 
promise 
“YT shall paint 

God in the midst, Madonna and her Babe. 

Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood, 

Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet 

As puff on puff of grated orris-root 

When ladies crowd to church at Midsummer.” 


Our picture is evidence enough that the time has come to 
Florentine art when youth shall be served. 

Monastic vows, and in fact duties of any sort, bore lightly 
on Fra Filippo. He tasted the forbidden sweets of life reck- 
lessly, and worked only when the rare mood urged. He was 
in and out of the good graces of the Medici. Called to Prato 
to fresco the choir of the Collegiata, in 1455, he was nine 
years achieving what a steady workman would have done 
in two. But in the meantime Fra Filippo had run away with 
the nun, Lucrezia Buti, shuffled off his monastic vows (through 
the indulgence of the humanist Pope, Pius II), married and 
settled down as the father of a family. His random joyous 
course was nearly run, and his last frescoes at Prato show a 
kind of discipline that is foreign to his earlier work. In 1464 
he completed the Feast of Herod and the Funeral of St. 
Stephen, frescoes which forecast the sort of narrative painting 
that was to mark the close of the century. 

About the brutality of the Feast of Herod, Figure 105, Fra 


= 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 163 


Filippo has cast a dreamy glamour, as indeed Giotto had be- 
fore him. The youthful guests are absorbed in Salome’s 
dancing. Following the sculptors of the day, Fra Filippo has 
made her slight and graceful, as she trips a careless measure. 


Fic. 105. Fra Filippo Lippi. Feast of Herod. Salome’s Dance. Fresco. 
— Collegiata. Prato. 


The air is simply that of a gentle society. The grim motive 
of the delivery of the head of John the Baptist to Herodias 
is gently emphasized by the charming act of two little hand- 
maids who clutch each other for fright. The sprightliness 
of the invention, the generalized idyllic charm of the feeling, 
the rich variety of accessories, the youthful timbre of the 
whole — make this not merely one of the best but also one 
of the most characteristic narrative mural paintings of the 
Early Renaissance. It strikes the note which will be echoed 
by Fra Filippo’s apprentice, Sandro Botticelli; which will be 
exaggerated by Fra Filippo’s son, Filippino, and distantly 
imitated by many another Florentine successor. 

If the Feast of Herod best exemplifies the element of homely 
poetry and inventive grace in Fra Filippo, the Burial of St. 
Stephen, Figure 106, just opposite in the choir proves that 
he was not oblivious to the high and decorous prose of his 


164 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


master Masaccio. In formality and power of construction 
few painters then living could have equalled it, and those 
few could not have rivalled its spacious architectural setting 
and its suggestion of atmosphere. At first sight it seems: 
nearly equal to the Tribute Money or at least to the Tabitha. 
On more careful survey it is less noble, more insistently pa- 
thetic, and in every way more loosely knit. In particular 
the portraits at the sides have little but a mechanical rela- 
tion to the theme. Masaccio himself had admitted a similar 
gallery of mere bystanders in The Miracle of the Prince, but 
had he lived to complete the fresco, he would doubtless have 
brought the portrait figures into some relation of interest 
in the miracle. Fra Filippo virtually waives that problem 
and merely flanks his real subject with bordering groups of 
persons of contemporary importance. As a matter of fact, the 
Florentine donor was no longer humble-minded and content 
to appear among the saints in miniature and unobtrusive — 
guise. He now insisted in being painted to the life with his 
family, friends, and dependents, —a complacent, incongru- 
ous apparition amid the humility or heroism of the saints. 
Fra Filippo made the sensible adjustment that the donors 
should serve as a sort of human frame for the religious pic- 
ture in the centre. This solution became tiresomely standard 
and lasted for fifty years or so, until the High Renaissance 
had authority enough to impose considerations of taste and 
self-effacement even upon wealthy. donors. 

In 1465 Fra Filippo was called to Spoleto, and there having 
started a lovely apse decoration, A Coronation, for the cathe- 
dral, he died and was buried. Quite unconsciously he had 
temporarily shattered that intellectual formalism which is 
the very essence of Florentine art, and had inaugurated that 
moral and artistic holiday which is made visible in the paint- 
ing of Botticelli and Ghirlandaio and audible in the songs 
of Lorenzo de’ Medici. 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 165 


This holiday mood is strong in Benozzo Gozzoli, and he 
spread it through Umbria and the Sienese country. Born 
in 1420, for a time an assistant of Fra Angelico, Benozzo’s 
task was to depict with more vivacity than insight the splen- 


Fic. 106. Fra Filippo Lippi. Funeral of St. Stephen. Fresco. — Collegiata. 
Prato. 


dors and humors of life. This he does, whether his theme be 
the legend of St. Francis, as at Montefalco in 1462, the Caval- 
cade of the Magi, Florence, 1469, the Life of St. Augustine, 
San Gimignano, 1465, or the doings of the Old Testament 
Patriarchs and Matriarchs, at Pisa, 1468-1484. He is always 
sunny, profuse, witty in an obvious way; and not without 
his tinge of the poetry of youth. He loves gardens, court- 
yards, forests, and equally well palaces, colonnades, crowds 
and incidents. He is indefatigably panoramic, and his fres- 
coes, if hardly good pictures, are at least good pickings, for 
their abundant and often refreshing detail. | 

Very splendid is that pageant of the Wise Men from the 
East, Figure 107, which he painted about 1469? for the private 
chapel of Cosimo de’ Medici’s palace. The gorgeous pro- 
cession winds about the walls, moving over the mountain 
roads and through the forests which you may still see up 


166 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the Arno valley towards Vallombrosa. ‘Their goal was the 
little panel over the altar where Filippo Lippi painted the 
Madonna reverently kneeling before her Son, Figure 102. 
This little picture was flanked by choirs, in fresco, of singing 
angels. For the oldest of the Three Kings Benozzo chose, 
according to tradition, the unfortunate Emperor John Palaeo- 
logus, who thirty years earlier had come to Florence on the 
vain mission of uniting the Eastern and Western branches of 
the Christian Church. The youthful kings are said to portray 
Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici. What we really have is a 
pictorial version of those religious pageants or representations 
which were common at the times. Many times Florence had 
seen her patricians in such a cavalcade. Benozzo’s fresco in 
its undiminished loveliness of color and gold — the Medici ap- 
parently either ordered few masses or burned few candles 
in their family chapel —is a most precious relic of bygone 
-splendors. Indeed they passed before Benozzo himself, for 
he lived on till 1498, four years after Lorenzo the Magnif- 
cent’s death, and the year of Savonarola’s martyrdom; the 
year, too, when Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper was being 
finished. Few artists have had such emphatic intimations 
that their world and they themselves were obsolete. It is 
in every way to be hoped in Benozzo’s case that he was at 
once too cheerful and too unintelligent to grasp the situation. 
This may be fairly supposed of a man who was content for 
fifty years of a swiftly moving world with what could be learned 
from Fra Angelico. 

Of course some painters declined to keep holiday and fever- 
ishly pursued the lines of realistic investigation laid down by 
Castagno and his contemporaries. The most notable of these 
is Antonio Pollaiuolo.2 He was trained in sculpture under 
Ghiberti, and worked most variously, at sculpture, painting, 
engraving, glass designing, and even embroiderers’ patterns. 
Everywhere he pursued with an almost ferocious intensity 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 167 


the secrets of anatomy and especially of the human body in 
violent action. He conceived the body as a powerful machine 
and rejoiced to display its mechanisms — knotted muscles, 


Fic. 7 Benozzo ee 
tail r i i. 
ae Riceardi ope ; ae Fic. 108. Antonio Pollaiuolo. 

Martyrdom of St. Sebastian. — 
London. 


straining sinews. He chose his subjects with this sort of dis- 
play in mind: Hercules and his feats, the archers setting their 
bows and crossbows for the slaying of St. Sebastian, nude men 
in deadly combat with dirks and axes, nude men wildly danc- 
ing. Nearly all these works suffer from their avowed experi- 
mentalism, but all are alive with a tingling not to say brutal 
energy. Antonio Pollaiuolo is the ancestor of all the strong 
painters who for over four centuries have delighted to appal 
the mild and sheeplike throng with wolfish antics. He is 
the first artist who is a specialist, pursuing his own ends in 
disregard of the surrounding public. As a matter of fact, 
Antonio’s muscular paganism fitted in fairly well with the 
notions of a Florence that worshipped power. The Medici 
ordered the twelve feats of Hercules for their palace, about 


168 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the year 1460. The great pictures are lost, but little copies 
by Antonio himself give an idea of their truculent force. In 
the Uffizi are Hercules crushing the breath out of the earth- 
born demigod Antzus, and Hercules slaying the Hydra. 
The tension, ardor, and ferocity of these tiny pictures are 
extraordinary. They seem to enhance our own _ physical 
life. At New Haven is the panel of Hercules shooting the 
Centaur Nessus, who races across a ford with Deinaira 
on his back. The background is an exact picture of the Arno 
valley looking from the west towards Florence. ‘The rep- 
resentation of the run of the river is extraordinary. Pol- 
laiuolo had adopted Domenico Veneziano’s miniature con- 
ception of landscape, but has introduced swing and motion. 

Equally remarkable is the Arno landscape in the Martyr- 
dom of St. Sebastian, Figure 108, which was painted in 1475. 
It has the defects of an experimental and academic perform- 
ance, is a show piece. The executioners are even repeated, 
to show both front and rear aspects. All the same, its power 
is impressive and beyond the range of any artist then living, 
with the possible exception of Piero della Francesca. In 
painting Pollaiuolo’s accomplishment is so even, and in draped 
figures so ugly, that we may well pass the series of Virtues 
which with his brother Piero he did in 1469 for the Mercan- 
tile Court, and consider his great engraving known as the 
Ten Nudes, Figure 109, the odd decorative disposition of which 
is imitated by Botticelli in the Allegory of Spring; and the 
fresco of Dancing Men, in which Pollaiuolo successfully vies 
with the convivial and Bacchic themes of the Greek vase 
painters. The group is odd and effective as pattern, and 
inspired by a joyous energy. 

Painting only claimed a fraction of Antonio’s effort; often 
he merely made the sketch and left the execution to his rather 
tame brother, Piero. At the end of his life he was called down 
to Rome to make the bronze tomb for Sixtus IV. There he 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 169 


died in the year 1498, being sixty-three years old. While 
his own achievement was somewhat cramped and limited, 
he had made the most valuable contributions to the art, or 
rather to the science of painting. He had inspired a titan 


Fic. to9. Antonio Pollaiuolo. Fighting Men— “The Ten Nudes.” 
Engraving. 


like Signorelli and a poet like Botticelli, and in certain aspects 
Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo only continued and per- 
fected his work. As late as Benvenuto Cellini’s day his sketches 
were passed about the studios for the instruction of young 
painters in anatomy. 

A kindred strenuous spirit, Piero della Francesca,‘ affords 
an interesting contrast to Pollaiuolo. Though an Umbrian, 
he belongs spiritually to Florence. For Piero the world was 
a frozen thing. He investigated with utmost zeal the mathe- 
matical basis of perspective, producing on that topic a la- 
borious and quite unreadable book. He studied anatomy 
and construction in light and dark, and all the atmospheric 
problems therewith associated. To attain atmospheric en- 


170 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


velopement, he sacrificed color. His pictures exist in silvery 
grays, suggesting the blondness and tonal unity of modern 
open-air painting. The drama of life never engrossed him. 
His world is passionless and 
almost motionless, coldly im- 
pressive. Although he practiced 
all refinements of modelling, he 
never made those relaxations of 
contour which suggest move- 
ment. His figures are finely con- 
structed and beautifully placed 
but emotionally unrelated. They 
merely exist rather splendidly, as 
do some of Manet’s figures. In- 
deed the warning of George Moore 
Fic. 110. Piero della Francesca. aS regards Manet applies equally 
ae ees se — Borgo S. to Piero. It is futile to seek from 
him anything but fine painting. 

Of his origins we know next to nothing. He was born about 
1410 in the Umbrian town of Borgo San Sepolcro. For several 
years after 1439 we find him at Florence as a paid assistant 
of Domenico Veneziano, whose pale tonalities and topo- 
graphically minute landscape reappear throughout Piero’s 
work. His austere power is best represented in the bleak 
Resurrection, Figure 110, which he painted in 1460 for his 
native city. The stalwart Conqueror of Death has an appari- 
tional impressiveness. He comes with power from beyond 
the grave. He dominates the world as represented by the 
sleeping athletes of the guard. A most potent effect is ob- 
tained without sacrifice to sentiment. ‘There is a similar de- 
tachment in the Baptism of Christ, in the National Gallery, 
London. Its pearly loveliness of color is in odd contrast to 
its evasions of anything like warmth or tenderness. It is less 
an event than a magnificently posed scene. The landscape 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 171 


is a liberating and informal feature, a skilful adaptation of - 
the method of Domenico Veneziano and Pollaiuolo. It is 
as crisp and calculated as a Japanese print, yet it gives 
its effect of space and breadth. 


Fic. 111. Piero della Francesca. Battle of Constantine, detail from 
fresco. — S. Francesco, Arezzo. 


Piero’s great opportunity came about 1465 when he painted 
in the choir of San Francesco at Arezzo ten stories from the 
Legend of the Holy Cross. For stark impressiveness it is hard 
to match them in Italy in this century. Only Masaccio and 
Leonardo da Vinci will at all bear the comparison. On analysis, 
the power rests mostly on the seriousness with which Piero 
takes his technical problem. There is little real grief or pathos 
in the Last Days of Adam, it is merely impersonally solemn. 
Even of the admirable fresco which represents Constantine in 
the uneasy dream in which he saw the vision of the cross, 
there is no warmth, no unexpected or emotional quality. So 


172 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


it is throughout the series; in the Queen of Sheba visiting 
Solomon, even in the splendid battlepiece, the Victory over 
Maxentius, Figure 111, the obvious sentiment of the theme is 
ignored, the figures have a kind of splendid unrelated existence 
that requires no apology or explanation. It is an effect that 
recalls the best archaic Greek sculpture. 

Taken all in all, Piero is a fOrmidable and enigmatic figure, 
an exception in a eager and emotional age. His truth to his 
vision is what counts. One feels it in the portrait of the human- 
ist sovereign and captain of Urbino, Federigo da Monte- 
feltro. It was painted about 1472 and is in the Uffizi, Figure 
112. How sternly honest it is, and what a presentation of 
a powerful and beneficent personality. Even the little decora- 
tive picture on the back of the panel, a Triumph of Fame, 
has an effect beyond its scale and obvious intention. It sug- 
gests wide dominions and heavy responsibilities manfully 
met. 

Piero della Francesca lived out his life mostly in Umbria 
and far from the artistic centre of things. ‘There is a self- 
suffcing quality in this voluntary isolation. He lived on to 
great old age, dying in 1492, and unless his declining years 
were perturbed by the faintly rising star of Leonardo da Vinci, 
he might boast himself, in the words of his and Leonardo’s 
friend, Fra Luca Pacioli, “‘the monarch of his times in the 
science of painting.” 

We must leave for the Umbrian chapter such sturdy con- 
tinuers of Piero della Francesca’s experimentalism as Melozzo 
da Forli and Luca Signorelli. What is more important to 
note in leaving him is that such triumphs as his in fresco 
painting were highly exceptional in the second half of the 
fifteenth century. The successes of the period are in the 
minor art of panel painting. The fantasies of Botticelli, 
the best portraits of Ghirlandaio, the early panels of Peru- 
gino and Signorelli and Leonardo da Vinci —these are the 


a 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 173 


outstanding things. In mural painting Florence actually 
retrograded, not merely as compared with the days of Masac- 
cio, Fra Filippo and Fra Angelico, but even as compared with 
the earlier days of Andrea Bona- 
iuti, Agnolo Gaddi and Spinello 
Aretino. The fact has been ob- 
scured by the superficial gain in 
small realism, in sprightliness, 
and mere prettiness, but in all 
the serious qualities of monu- 
mental design the decadence is 
unmistakable. The favorite dec- 
orators simply executed on a 
large scale the sort of compo- 
sitions that would have been 
charming on the front of a bride- 
chest. In the general enthusiasm 


for the parts of pictures the 


; ; Fic. 112. Piero della Francesca. 
sense of pictures as a whole Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, 


despot of Urbino. — Uffizi. 


seemed in danger of being lost. 
The undiscriminating enthusiasm for the primitive painting of 
the Early Renaissance which has ruled for two generations has 
so clouded critical opinion on this point, that I must be at 
some pains to make my case good. 

Perhaps I can do no better than to review some of the 
frescoes which Pope Sixtus IV ordered about 1481 for the 
new chapel of the Vatican Palace. He summoned to the 
Sistine Chapel the best available artists from both Tuscany 
and Umbria. By the measure of their success we may esti- 
mate the mural painting of the time. 

Originally the decorative scheme, later amplified by Michel- 
angelo, required sixteen scriptural stories, in which the deeds 
of Moses were parallelled by those of Christ. The two first 
and two last subjects, on the end walls, have been destroyed, 


174 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


but we still see the twelve on the side walls. In general they 
all show the old Gothic coloring, are mostly vivacious in a 
confused and over-rich way, and lack unity of pattern and 
dramatic coherence. 


Fic. 113. Assistant of Perugino. Baptism. Fresco.— Sistine Chapel. 


One of the most admired is the Baptism of Christ, Figure 
113, by Pintorricchio, (or, as Venturi suggests, Andrea of 
Assisi) who here works as Perugino’s assistant. ‘The story 
is told in the centre and reinforced by a spacious landscape 
which is confusingly full of attractive features. The theme 
is mechanically stretched to fill the space by adding at both 
flanks groups which have slight or no connection with the sub- 
ject. These groups are interestingly diversified with fine 
portraits of the Pope’s relatives, the Roveres, and by the 
alert forms of children. The effect is fairly restful and idyllic, 
but the pattern is mechanical, and the emotional effect of the 
real theme is frittered away in the accessories. The method 
of enlarging a stock composition by adding portrait groups 
is standard for the Sistine Chapel and for the period. Masaccio 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 175 


had tried it more effectively in the Miracle of the Boy, and 
Filippo Lippi had made it seem almost organic in The Funeral 
of St. Stephen. Pintorricchio, if it be he, is more superfi- 


Fic. 114. Botticelli. Moses in the Land of Midian. Fresco. — Sistine 
Chapel, Rome. 


cially alluring for his richness and variety, but really stands 
on a far lower plane of design than his predecessors. 

If this mechanical symmetry is the standard method, there 
are significant exceptions in the Sistine Chapel. The more 
sensitive spirits, Botticelli and Luca Signorelli, reject so trite 
a solution. Botticelli’s Moses in Midian, Figure 114, offers 
a delicate evasion, by promoting a minor motive to be the 
central theme. All the incidents that are dramatically im- 
portant —the slaying of the Egyptian taskmaster, and the 
adoration of the Burning Bush from which Jehovah spoke 
— are done with the most energetic feeling, but are relegated 
to the background and edges of the composition. The pic- 
ture is really the fine grove in which Moses gallantly helps 
the nymph-like daughters of Jethro to draw water. A fan- 


176 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


tastic idyl is foisted off on us as a substitute for one of the 
decisive moments in the Providential order. Botticelli is 
so winning in his evasion, that it seems almost unfeeling to 
note that no Gothic painter would have done anything so 


Fic. 115. Signorelli, Design only. Last Days of Moses. Fresco. — 
Sistine Chapel, Rome. 


shifty. His success is not merely at the expense of the ex- 
pression of his real theme, but also at the expense of the order 
and dignity proper to mural design. Having ordered a canto 
of an epic, the Pope received a delicious madrigal. His con- 
tentment is characteristic of the zsthetic casualness of the 
times. 

Signorelli, in the Last Days of Moses, Figure 115, makes a 
similar but less egregious evasion. His centre of interest is 
the nude youth in the foreground, but he does give a certain 
prominence to the scenes where Moses invests Joshua with 
authority, and where both view the Promised Land from 
Mount Horeb. Though without much emotional accent, 
the crowds are agreeably: disposed and diversified by grace- 
ful forms of women and children. Only the design is by Sig- 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 177 


norelli, the execution being by an assistant, Don Bartolommeo 
della Gatta. The picture is more delightful for such passages 
as the Apollo-like nude youth and the mother with her chil- 
dren in the right foreground than it is as a whole, though: it 
is full of idyllic charm, and inadequate only when one con- 
siders the gravity of its theme. ) 


In his Calling of Peter and Andrew, Figure 116, to be fishers 


Fic. 116. Ghirlandaio. Christ calling Peter and Andrew. Fresco. — 
Sistine Chapel, Rome. 


of men, Domenico Ghirlandaio makes a skilful and impres- 
sive use of that approved mechanical symmetry which has 
already been noticed in Pintorricchio’s Baptism. Every- 
thing is well centralized, the river view is a welcome outlet, 
the stereotyped bystanders on the flanks at least are telling 
portraits and, while not bound into the central motive, have 
withal a gravity that sufficiently accords with it. ‘The ar- 
rangement is lucid, and the surplus accessories fairly well 
subordinated. A rather perfunctory quality in the central 
scene of homage and dedication reveals Ghirlandaio’s scanty 
imagination. His impressiveness has a certain dullness about it. 


178 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Few words need be spent on the picturesque and irrespon- 
sible confusion which reigns in Cosimo Rosselli’s Destruction 
of Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea, Figure 117. Cosimo was 
one of the older painters in the chapel, forty-two years old. 


Fic. 117. Cosimo Rosselli. Destruction of Pharaoh’s Army. Fresco.— 
Sistine Chapel. 


Yet a juvenile sensationalism and uncalculated restlessness 
‘prevail, and his attempts at vivacity and grace are as un- 
happy as his striving for effects of terror. It may well be 
that his eccentric young pupil, Piero di Cosimo, gave this 
fresco its febrile energy and its theatrical landscape. Certain 
it is that the three other frescoes by Cosimo are unmitigatedly 
dull. Oddly it was he alone who won the praise of Pope Six- 
tus, mostly for his profuse introduction of gold ornament. 

We have seen in the Sistine Chapel a mechanical and rather 
perfunctory symmetry, various clever evasions of an idyllic 
sort, and a picturesque disorder side by side. The most am- 
bitious decorative scheme of the time seems to result in a 
kind of artistic bankruptcy. But fortunately the Sistine 
Chapel contains its own self-criticism and remedy, in the 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 179 


extraordinary fresco by Pietro Perugino, Christ delivering 
the Keys to Peter, Figure 118. Perugino is an Umbrian from 
Citta della Pieve, thirty-five years old, and with a certain 
amount of Florentine training. He has, like Masaccio sixty 


Fic. 118. Perugino. Christ giving the Keys to Peter. Fresco. — Sistine 
Chapel, Rome. 


years before, looked at the art of his times and found it want- 
ing. He has had the lucidity to see that the malady is sur- 
plusage and disorder. Hence, he argues, the remedy is sim- 
plicity and order. To this he adds a sense of vastness. In 
this picture the temple platform, a vastness made by man, 
is set within the vastness of a river valley made by nature. 
The foreground group is arranged in a formal half military 
order which is cunningly made easy and flexible by differences 
of posture and gesture. Every tilted head and pointed foot 
has its reason. Without undue insistence, all the apostles 
are interested in the rite which ordains their chief. Here is 
no casual pleasure ground in which you may delightfully look 
about, here is a definite vision of a momentous act which you 
must see swiftly, completely, and precisely as the artist in- 


180 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


tends you shall see. It is the only well-considered design 
among these frescoes. It points the simplest and surest way 
by which the exuberance of the Early Renaissance might be 
disciplined into a noble order, and within twenty years the 
lesson was to be reread for all Italy by young Raphael of 
Urbino. Meanwhile the somewhat irresponsible exuberance 
of the new narrative painting.has after all its winning aspect, 
is a sign of an energy and enthusiasm that need not so much 
to be tamed as to be intellectualized. 

In discussing the last twenty years of the fifteenth cen- 
tury in Florence | am embarrassed by the richness of the 
field. Beside such typical figures as Botticelli and Ghirlan- 
daio, we have to do with such sensitive and morbid spirits 
as Filippino Lippo and Piero di Cosimo; with Andrea Ver- 
rocchio and a group of imitators of his fastidious manner, 
notable among them young Leonardo da Vinci; with ‘a host 
of secondary painters, particularly of furniture panels, and 
small altar-pieces, while if we consider rather artistic train- 
ing than accident of birth, we must reckon with the Floren- 
tine achievement the rugged triumphs of Luca Signorelli. 
But since the more distinctive and progressive of these artists 
are really precursors of the Golden Age, or symptomatic 
of the unrest that was its prelude, they may best be treated 
later. That will leave us only the painters who are fully 
representative of the festal moment of Lorenzo the Mag- 
nificent’s greatness — the furniture painters and Ghirlandaio. 

Those excesses of vivacity, those extravagances of in- 
vention, those juvenile graces which were a weakness in mural 
painting, were admirably in place in the decoration of chests 
and wainscots. The greater artists gladly accepted this 
little work, and some painters painted exclusively trousseau 
chests (cassoni) for young brides —an enviable occupation, 
for surely these fair young creatures had to be personally 
consulted. The subjects glorify love, magnify valor, celebrate 


Perio LIPPY AND NARRATIVE STYLE 281 


the festal life of the day, its pageants, feasts, and dances. 
Of professional cassone painters Francesco Pesellino® (1422- 
1457) is the most famous. He is bewitching in variety and 
sensitiveness of invention, in refinement of story telling, 
and in glamour of color. ‘Iwo admirable cassone fronts by 


Fic. 119. Francesco Pesellino. Cassone Front. Triumphs of Love, 
Chastity, and Death. — Mrs. Fohn L. Gardner, Boston. 


him are owned by Mrs. John L. Gardner, Figure 119. They 
represent the six triumphs described by Petrarch in so many 
Canzont. Love, Chastity, Death, Time, Fame, and Eter- 
nity are figured forth much as these themes were embodied 
in contemporary pageants, about the year 1450. The subjects 
were favorites for cassoni less because of their grave moral 
import than because Petrarch was Love’s accredited Poet 
Laureate. 

We have in the New York Historical Society the superb 
salver, Figure 119a, which was prepared against the birth of 
Lorenzo de’ Medici. Appropriately it shows knights acclaim- 
ing fame. ‘The date is 1448, the painter of the school of 
Domenico Veneziano. 

We often see the Queen of Sheba reverently approaching 
Solomon. It is the admonition that a young bride should 
seek wisdom. Battles and Roman triumphs are tediously 
common. They set a mark of valor for the bridegroom. Wed- 
ding Feasts are almost tautological on a bride-chest, but they 
afford charming pictures of the Florence that amused itself. 

Mythology often dignifies these painted stories, the refer- 


182 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


ence being generally to that beauty which is institutional 
in brides. Thus we have in a spalliera panel in the Fogg 
Museum the Judgment of Paris, with the competing god- 
desses more modestly clothed than Ovid’s record justifies. 


6 Aig, 


a aia ait 


Fic. 119a. Follower of Domenico Veneziano, perhaps Baldovinetti. 
Triumph of Fame. Birth Salver for Lorenzo de’ Medici. — WN. Y. 
Historical Society. 

The work is possibly an exceptionally amiable product of 
Cosimo Rosselli, and the date may be about 1475. The Rape of 
Helen, which was of course due to her fatal beauty, is a common 
if unedifying subject for bride-chests. So is Actaeon torn by 
the hounds of the Divine Huntress for his temerity in sur- 
prising Diana at her bath. A delightful panel in the pos- 
session of Mr. Martin Ryerson at Chicago recounts in many 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 183 


episodes the adventures of Ulysses from his escape from 
Polyphemus to his home-coming at Ithaca. The dalliances 
of the much-experienced wanderer are by no means con- 
cealed, but at least the scene opens with prominent display 
of the episode most creditable to him as a married man, 
the baffling of the Sirens, and closes with the exemplary figure 
of constant Penelope weaving her interminable web. 


Fic. 120, Bartolommeo di Giovanni under Botticelli’s direction. 
Nastagio degli Onesti’s Feast. Spalliera panel.— Spiridon Coll., 
Parts. 


In furniture painting we are generally in the realm of 
comedy. But we touch pathos in Boccaccio’s story of patient 
Griselda, at Bergamo, Modena, and elsewhere; while we ap- 
proach tragedy in the many versions of chaste Susanna as- 
sailed and traduced by the elders, and attain to notable melo- 
drama in Boccaccio’s grim vision of the spirit lover eternally 
harrying the miserable ghost of his merciless lady through 
the pine wood of Ravenna. The best of these panels is 
in the Spiridon Collection, Paris. The ghostly scene of the 
chase takes place before the picnic party, Figure 120, artfully 
arranged by Nastagio degli Onesti to prove to his unfeeling 


184 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


lady that there is a penalty in the next world for being too 
cruel to a lover in this. The lesson Boccaccio tells us was 
effective, and they lived happily together ever afterwards. 
The panel was designed by Botticelli and painted by his 
assistant, Bartolommeo di Giovanni, for the wedding of a Bini 
groom and a Pucci bride in the year 1487. 

With it we take leave of Florentine furniture painting, 
an art too unpretentious to be considered at length in a general 
survey, yet too charming in itself and too representative of the 
heyday of Florentine wealth and gayety to be wholly neg- 
lected. 

Sandro Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio mark in very 
different fashions the culmination and the close of the Early 
Renaissance in Florence. Botticelli is the poet of its nostalgia. 
He expresses not its joyous average, but the erotic and mys- 
tical subtilities of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Platonic Academy, 
and later the Apocalyptic hopes and despairs that gathered 
around Savonarola. He utters a discontent and ideality 
which in part are completely contained in his work and in 
part were only fulfilled in the rapidly approaching Golden 
Age. He is aristocratic and individual, hence we shall con- 
sider him in connection with his fellow intellectuel, Leonardo 
da Vinci. Domenico Ghirlandaio,’ on the contrary, is the 
most completely contented creature, imaginable. He never 
even dreamt of anything desirable beyond his Florence. He 
loved the local spectacle too dearly to represent it literally. 
He generally prettified it, more rarely he glorified it. Its 
mundane ideals were his. “Towards its people, its young men 
and maidens and grave merchants and magistrates he brought, 
without Fra Filippo Lippi’s sensitiveness, an equal curiosity 
and admiration. And Florence fairly deserved the adora- 
tion of such a man as was he. Wisely and generously ruled by 
Lorenzo de’ Medici, who exemplified not merely the practical 
virtues of the city but also her more engaging vices, author. 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 185 


of wise policy and of wittily dissolute songs; combining the 
self-respecting appearances of liberty with the advantages 
of benevolent despotism, abounding in new wealth, lavish 
in pleasure and spectacle, unre- 
strained by a religion which was 
becoming merely a social decency 
and a form of fire-insurance 
against a not impossible hell — 
Florence had reached a pitch of 
complacency and worldly well- 
being the like of which the world 
has perhaps never seen before or 
since. The menacing sword of 
the spirit was already swaying 
over it in the eloquence of a 


young Dominican monk at Fer- 
Pate tiem rorence’strod. the: fy, 131, Domenico Ghirlandaid. 
primrose path unconscious of St. Jerome. Fresco. — Ognissanti. 
the doom at hand for her. And Ghirlandaio was present to 
immortalize everything that was pleasant in her short prime. 
He was born in 1449, his father appropriately being a gar- 
land-maker for gay Florence. He was trained under Alesso 
Baldovinetti, but prudently declined to compromise his own 
bright coloring with the new technic of oil painting. He 
studied with profit the ornate narratives of Benozzo Gozzolli. 
One of his earliest frescoes, painted about 1470 in Ognissanti, 
already reveals the grounds of his later popularity. The 
- vivid portraits of the Vespucci family so crowd about a Ma- 
donna of Pity as to make her seem quite secondary. 
Somewhat later he painted the legend of Santa Fina at 
San Gimignano. MHere Gozzoli’s simpler vein is imitated, 
and the effect has a rusticity befitting the theme. Soon 
the bottega at Florence flourished mightily. There were 
two younger brothers to help, and all commissions were ex- 


186 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


ecuted with businesslike dispatch. About 1480 we find him 
once more painting for the Church of Ognissanti. His St. 
Jerome there, Figure 121, is a beautifully groomed old prel- 
ate in a wonderfully kept study. The Saint is caught in an 


ROTOR REE SRE EE IDO UNNE EV BRE ARR TK 


) 


Fic. 122. Ghirlandaio. The Last Supper. Fresco. — Refectory, Ognissantt. 


interval of work, searching perhaps for the right Latin word 
to render the Hebrew text before him. He is grave and not 
too stern. The colors are vivid without much regard for har- 
mony. Very little of the fire of the missionary who declined 
to subject the mysteries of God to the rules of the grammarian 
Donatus is suggested. One has only to look at Botticelli’s 
St. Augustine, opposite in the church, agonized by the burden — 
of thought, to realize that Ghirlandaio has cared nothing for 
the psychology of his theme, but has given us any comfortable 
old Florentine scholar placidly occupied in his scriptorium. 

A similar lack of emotional content mars the otherwise 
delightful Last Supper, Figure 122, which was painted that 
same year for the refectory of Ognissanti. . Pathos, not to 
say tragedy, is carefully kept out of the most solemn of scenes. 
The eye is likely to go first to the tree-tops and flying birds 
seen above the screen, then it becomes vaguely aware of a 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 187 


gentle company quietly feasting. Except for a faint trace of 
classicism in the costumes, it could be any governing board 
of any religious confraternity of the day, decorously enjoy- 
ing its annual dinner. ‘The qualities and defects of Ghir- 
landaio are fully apparent in this fresco — his lucidity and 
sweetness, his emotional nullity. 

The next year, 1481, Ghirlandaio painted in the Sistine 
Chapel at Rome Christ Calling Peter and Andrew. We 
have already considered this his nearest approach to monu- 
mental design. Shortly before the Roman trip he married, 
and when his wife Costanza died, after a decent interval, 
he repeated the adventure. The two wedlocks were blessed 
by nine children of whom one, Ridolfo, was to become in turn 
a notable painter. Such fecundity was worthy of the man 
who once sighed for a commission to fresco the seven-mile 
circuit of the walls of Florence. On his return from Rome 
Ghirlandaio decorated the great hall of the Palace of the Priors, 
and from now on merely a list of his commissions and patrons 
would be a blue book of the old aristocracy and new wealth 
of Florence. 

Thus in 1485 he contracted with Francesco Sassetti to do 
a chapel in the Trinita with Stories of St. Francis. Sassetti 
was confidential treasurer for Lorenzo the Magnificent, about 
the most important financial position in the world at the 
moment; a selfmade and ambitious man. He had tried in 
vain to get a finer chapel in a bigger church, but the patrician 
vested interests prevented. Still the chapel to the right of 
the Choir of the Trinita was no mean place, this Vallombrosan 
foundation being one of the oldest in Florence. Ghirlandaio 
took special pains with the frescoes, studying with intelli- 
gence Giotto’s famous versions of the stories at Santa Croce. 
He is most nearly monumental where he follows Giotto, as 
in the Death of St. Francis, but he also shows surprising feli- 
cities of his own. The scene where Pope Honorius III con- 


188 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 

stitutes St. Francis and his fellows a monastic order, is 
remarkable for not only fine incidental portraiture, but 
for a nobility of space-composition faintly anticipating 
Raphael. One scarcely realizes the subject as such. All the 


Fic. 123. Domenico Ghirlandaio. Miracle of the Spini Boy. Fresco. — 
Trinita. 
dramatic features with which Giotto emphasized the eager- 
ness of the saint, the humility of his companions, the profes- 
sional dignity of the Pope and the half-veiled hostility of the 
papal court are absent. One’s eyes go over the group to the 
familiar grandiose prospect of the Piazza della Signoria at 
Florence, and one feels that never till now has he rightly ap- 
prehended its amplitude and splendor. Then there are sharp 
pleasant surprises. At the left is the ugly and fascinating 
figure of Lorenzo de’ Medici and behind him the gross 
apparition of Francesco Sassetti himself. And in front there 
are people coming up from a lower level, only their heads and 
shoulders emerging. The swarthy man who leads is Angelo 
Poliziano, greatest of humanistic poets, tutor of Lorenzo’s 
sons. And the boys are these gifted children destined to be 
popes, and granddukes. The combination of great spacious- 
ness and centrality with casual unexpected graces is so piquant 
and original, that I suppose Ghirlandaio may have hit upon it 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 189 


almost accidentally, owing to the inevitable relations of his 
Gothic lunette to the architectural forms in the fresco. In 
any case Ghirlandaio never again did anything as impressive. 
It is his greatest hymn of praise 
to the Florence that he so dearly 
loved. 

In the same chapel is a re- 
markable picture representing 
the Piazza of the Trinita with 
St. Francis resuscitating a boy 
of the Spini family, Figure 123. 
It has extraordinary bits of in- 
vention, but lacks the organi- 
zation of the fresco just discussed. 
The <altar-piece for the chapel, 
an Adoration of the Shepherds, 


Fic. 124.. Domenico Ghirlandaio. 


now in the Uffizi, represents the eae of the Magi. — In- 
nNOCceénil. 


graciousness of Ghirlandaio in 

familiar narrative his willing acceptance of the panoramic 
richness of the age, and his exceptional power of portraiture 
in these rustics painted from himself and from members of 
the Sassetti family. The ruggedness of the characterization 
_ suggests Flemish painting. Ghirlandaio may well have been 
influenced by the great Nativity with Portraits which Hugo 
van der Goes sent down from Ghent, in 1476, to the Hospital 
Church of Santa Maria Nuova. 

Ghirlandaio’s altar-pieces are many. ‘They are brilliant 
without real harmony of color; pretty, without much insight, in 
the types of the Virgin and youthful saints. The most 
elaborate of these panels, An Adoration of the Magi, Figure 
124, was finished in 1488 for the Foundling Hospital dedicated 
to the Massacred Innocents of Bethlehem. It still stands on 
its original altar in the chapel of the Innocenti, and is a radiant 
thing. The crowded group of adorers in the foreground is well 


190 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


knit together. Ghirlandaio had taken a shrewd look at Botti- 
celli’s Epiphany (now at Petrograd), or at Leonardo da Vinci’s 
unfinished masterpiece. By a touching and appropriate inven- 
tion, Ghirlandaio has set two of the martyred Innocents kneel- 
ing in white robes and crowned with a saint’s nimbus among 
the Wise Men. There are, as usual, many portraits, including 
Ghirlandaio’s own, by the pillar at the night. The deep river 
valley, suggested by northern paintings or engravings, relieves 
the somewhat congested character of the figure arrangement. 
The girlish Madonna would do no discredit to the front. cover 
of a nation-wide periodical today. So gracious and ingenious 
is this picture that one regrets to note that it is rather cleverly 
staged than deeply felt, its manifold prettiness and _ pictur- 
esqueness, of a quite obvious character. 

As Ghirlandaio had moved from success to success, so he 
was destined to end in his day of highest glory. In 1485 he 
signed a contract with Giovanni Tornabuoni, of the old no- 
bility, to decorate the choir of the most aristocratic church in 
Florence, Santa Maria Novella. The subjects, the Life of the 
Virgin and St. John the Baptist, were already on the wall in 
the guise of water-soaked and ruined frescoes by Andrea 
Orcagna. Ghirlandaio provided pastoral scenes with wide 
landscapes, city prospects with charming girls plentiful in 
foreground, rich patrician interiors with graceful women and 
their attendants making visits of ceremony, rare religious 
events with heavy magistrates and dignitaries standing in- 
attentively by — everything in short that a prosperous and 
well-bred Florentine of the moment was accustomed to think 
desirable in beauty, gentleness, or worldly estate. Charac- 
teristic are the Salutation of Mary and Elizabeth, a picture 
in which the solemnity of the scene, so magnificently asserted 
by Giotto at Padua, slips away into mere spectacle and ci- 
vility; the Birth of Saint John, Figure 125, with a young girl 
of the Tornabuoni family making her visit with her maids, 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE IgI1 


and all manner of graceful and rich accessories; or again, the 
Presentation in The Temple, with a whole tribe of Torna- 
buonis and Ghirlandaios in negligent attendance on the sacred 
rite. These may stand for the whole. For their casual and 


Fic. 125. Domenico Ghirlandaio. Birth of St. John. — Santa Maria 
Novella. 
mundane richness John Ruskin has poured upon these fres- 
coes his double-distilled vials of wrath. What he says as to 
their superficiality and emptiness of religious feeling is true 
enough, yet his denunciatory rhetoric serves but as a trip- 
hammer to demolish an eggshell which has after all its iri- 
descent frail beauty. Gentler methods are better with so 
gently mundane a creature as Ghirlandaio. The Lord’s 
people, as he saw them about him, were good enough for him 
and for his art. Criticism should rather insist that, being 
worldly, he was not worldly enough to be strong and lucid, 
but too readily had recourse to promiscuous richness and per- 
functory ideals of prettiness. Still, it does not befit the age 


192 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


or race whose characteristic art product is the smiling or 
pensive girl on the cover of the popular magazine to throw 
the first stone at Domenico Ghirlandaio. 7 
. Whatever the verdict as to 
his nominally religious paint- 
ing, in portraiture Ghirlan- 
daio is one of the greatest 
figures of his time. Portraits 
of the finest qualitiés abound 
in his frescoes, and he has left 
a few incomparable things on 
panel. Few Renaissance por- 
traits have the authority of 
the amazing old man, Figure 
126, in the Louvre, who 
fondles an adoring boy. In 
this picture, deformity be- 
comes a grace, and the spir- 


Fic. 126. Domenico Ghirlandaio. itual and material inter reta- 
Old Man and Boy. — Paris. P 


tion are of equal incisiveness 
and beauty. As fine in another vein is the profile of Giovanna 
degli Albizzi in the J. P. Morgan Collection, Figure 1o1. It 
is dated in 1488. It is the supreme portrait of a Florentine 
beauty of a passing and lovely moment. An instant of time, 
when the old simplicity had enriched itself with new learning; 
when with the new humanism the tournament and court of 
love persisted; when courtly manners had become an ideal 
without freezing into an official code — all this is for a sensi- 
tive and informed observer in this placid well-poised head of 
an ill-starred Florentine bride. She died in 1488, a little be- 
fore the overthrow of the Florence she typifies. Her accom- 
plished young husband, Lorenzo Tornabuoni, equally ade- 
quate in the tilt yard, the study, or the council hall, lived on 
for nine years and shared the death agony of the society of 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 193 


which he was a chief ornament. When his head fell under 
Savonarola’s orders, a splendid chapter of early Florentine 
humanism closed. Thus these young people died with their 
Florence, leaving no descendants, but a memory eternally 
fragrant. 

The year of Giovanna’s death, 1488, Ghirlandaio, being 
thirty-nine years old, took a new wife, and continued dili- 
gently at the frescoes of Santa Maria Novella. Not being 
overburdened with imagination, he probably never guessed he 
was occupied with a memorial of a society already doomed. 
Doubtless he followed the fashionable throng to San Marco 
where for a year Fra Girolamo Savonarola had been preaching 
against the current vanities. Ghirlandaio presumably ap- 
proved the oratory, with a comfortable sense that while un- 
worldliness might very properly be preached, no sensible 
city could ever be induced to practice it. Perhaps he never 
woke up to the appalling fact that Savonarola literally meant 
business both evangelically and politically. 

So Ghirlandaio’s Florence moved swiftly to its doom, and 
the while he saved much of its look and grace on the walls 
of his choir. For a year a touchy and ugly little boy 
who carried the disproportionately great name of Michel- 
angelo Buonarotti scrambled discontentedly about the scaffold- 
ing of the choir, lending a hand here and there, and learning 
the old art of fresco painting. Ghirlandaio of course never 
knew that in the restless apprentice he was training a titan. 
He probably thought him a nuisance. By the end of 1493 the 
frescoes of the Virgin and St. John the patron of Florence were 
nearly finished, and the altar-piece, an Assumption, was al- 
ready planned. At forty-four Ghirlandaio had at once reached 
his climax and painted himself down an anachronism. Of 
course he didn’t know it; such self-knowledge is mercifully 
spared us. The luck of Ghirlandaio was extraordinarily con- 
stant. Nowhere is it more signally shown than in the date of 


194 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


his death. Some inkling that things were going ill under 
Piero de’ Medici’s fitful rule must have come to him, but he 
died in January 1494, a good ten months before the Medici 
were expelled, their palaces sacked, and Savonarola in charge 
of a Florence terrified into sobriety. 

To those painters from Fra Filippo to Ghirlandaio who 
caught the look and unpretentious poetry of Medicean Flor- 
ence we owe an especial gratitude. They are not in the direct 
line of progress and they none of them reached the heights 
of art. But for centuries they have never failed to give de- 
lightful information, while infallibly touching average human 
sympathies. We do ill to idolize them, for they were after 
all rather small men, but we do well also to honor them ac- 
cording to their accomplishment. ‘They did their particular 
task of enlivening decoration with illustrative episodes, with 
tact, refinement and knowledge; with all the sympathy of 
the modestly observant eye. Most of their work had to be 
undone before the Grand Style was possible, but it all evinces 
the vitality and variety without which as preliminary train- 
ing the Grand Style itself could hardly have attained its 
elaborate and strictly ordered composure. We do well to take 
Vasari’s general view of these artists of the human spectacle 
—not considering them so much as weak links in a mighty 
chain, but as complete in themselves, as a youth may be com- 
plete even though the young man dies in the glory of his un- 
folding. Why expect prematurely the sedate splendors of 
middle age? Take then this art for what it offers —an un- 
systematic fairy land which is yet half real, and keep your 
higher standards in reserve for artists who better deserve them. 
For austere standards are held by a truly civilized person for 
purposes of discriminate praise and not as a ready means of. 
promiscuous blame. 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI] AND NARRATIVE STYLE 195 


ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER IV 


PAGEANTRY IN OLD FLORENCE 


The art of Gozzoli and the cassone painters, and, in part, that of 
Filippo Lippi and Ghirlandaio implies the background of public pag- 
eantry at Florence. ‘There is a precious piece of old doggerel which 
describes the festivities, in May 1450, for the reception of Pope Pius II 
and Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan. The palaces and churches 
were completely hung with rich stuffs, the sumptuary laws were sus- 
pended in favor of the fair sex; besides many processions and feasts, 
there was bear baiting in the Piazza della Signoria, an all night open 
_air ball in the Mercato Nuovo, and a tournament in the Piazza di Santa 


_ Croce. I paraphrase the verses which describes the pageant of a Tri- 


umph of Love which was conducted by ten year old Lorenzo de’ Medici. 
The subject is common in cassoni and deschi da parto. The boy Lorenzo 
mounted on a marvellously caparisoned horse headed the pageant, 
and while all the people whispered their admiration — 

“As prudent and wise lad he conducted the Triumph of the God of 
Love . . . In all triumph he made Cupid come, who so gently smites 
the gentle heart. Upon a car I saw him, and so I tell, most marvellously 
adorned and wrought, how it was made I dare not say. On four wheels 
it was finely adorned with a raised stand and fixed on every corner 
thereof as a column the form and fashion of an angel. And I who saw 
it thought of a castle. Upon the four columns was a great ball and above 
it another ornamented piece. This was gilded everywhere... 

so that it sparkled like the sun. I cannot tell of such beauties, but 
I can tell about the top part which was most delightful. Above all... 
I saw stand a youth, with two great wings of many colors on his shoulders 
_and all the rest nude, holding that bow with which he wounds all hearts, 
and playfully puts venom therein, so that while burning within, nothing 
shows without. This Triumph so marvellous and so invested with 
colors, its adornment very glorious — with so many pearls, carbuncles 
and pees —I couldn’t reckon how any florins that Triumph was 
worth I say.” 

The whole poem is areal treasure of such lore and att be translated. 
It is found in the new edition of Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 
pas XXVIL. The Uae is from page 3, lines 1330-1363. 


196 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


THE PROCESSION OF THE MAGI 


On St. John’s Day, 1354, Matteo Palmieri tells us in his Annals, 

there were many religious representations of which the most interest- 
ing to us, as a probable inspirer of Gozzoli’s frescoes, is that of the 
Three Kings from the East. There was — 
“A magnificent and triumphant temple for the habitation [stage 
setting ] of the Magi, in which was inclosed an octagonal temple adorned 
with the seven Virtues, and on the east side the Virgin with the New 
Born Christ. [Probably figures in a tableau vivant] 

“The three Magi with a cavalcade of more than 200 horse adorned 
with many splendors came to make offerings to the New Born Christ.” 

New ed. of Muratori, Tom. XXII, p. 173. 

Probably all the artists mentioned in this chapter saw these two 
splendid pageants and many more. Such sights count for much 
in the alert and profusely ornamented painting of the fifteenth 
century. 


PAGEANTS IN 1466 


Piero de’ Medici “in order to give men something to think about 
which should take their thoughts from the state, and a year having 
passed since Cosimo had died, seized the occasion to enliven the city 
and ordered two elaborate celebrations, following the others that are 
customary in that city. One which represented, when the three Kings, 
the Magi, came from the East behind the star which showed the birth 
of Christ; the which was of such pomp and so magnificent, that in 
arranging and holding it the entire city was occupied for several months.” 

Machiavelli, [storie fiorentine, Lib. VII, cap. xii. 

“The other Lfestival, Machiavelli continues] was a tournament (for 
so they used to call a spectacle, which represented a cavalry skirmish) 
where the first youths of the city exercised themselves against the most 
famous knights of Italy; and among the young men of Florence the 
most in repute was Lorenzo, first-born son of Piero, who not by favor, 
but by his own valor carried off the first honours.” 

Lorenzo was then a likely lad of seventeen. 


A SIDE-LIGHT ON GHIRLANDAIO’S PATRONS 


A Trick for getting a Family Chapel in 1488 


The choir of Santa Maria Novella was under the patronage of the Ricci 
family, but they were poor and had been unable to repair the water- 


FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND NARRATIVE STYLE 197 


stained frescoes of Orcagna, which had been painted a century and a 
quarter earlier. So Giovanni Tornabuoni got permission to redecorate 
the chapel on condition of setting the Ricci arms “‘in the most con- 
spicuous and honourable place in that chapel.’’ And so the contract 
was drawn. Domenico Ghirlandaio actually set the Tornabuoni arms 
in huge scale on the side pilasters, whereas he painted the Ricci arms 
half a foot high on the door of the ciborium in the centre of the base 
of his altar-piece. The rest in Vasari’s words (de Vere’s translation, 
Vol. III, p. 224): 

‘And a fine jest it was at the opening of the chapel, for these Ricci 
looked for their arms with much ado, and finally, not being able to find 
them, went off to the Tribunal of Eight, contract in hand. Whereupon 
the Tornabuoni showed that these arms had been placed in the most 
conspicuous and honourable part of the work; and although the others 
exclaimed that they were invisible, they were told that they were in 
the wrong, and that they must be content, since the Tornabuoni had 
caused them to be placed in so honourable a position as the neighbor- 
hood of the most Holy Sacrament. And so it was decided by that tri- 
bunal that they should be left untouched, as they may be seen to-day. 
Now, if this should appear to anyone to be outside the scope of the Life 
that I have to write, let him not be vexed, for it all flowed naturally 
from the tip of my pen. And it should serve, if for nothing else, at least 
to show how easily poverty falls a prey to riches, and how riches, if 
accompanied by discretion, achieve without censure anything that a 
man desires.” 


DAWN OF THE GOLDEN AGE: BOTTICELLI 
AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 


Fic. 127. Leonardo da Vinci. Cartoon of Madonna and St. Ann. — 
Burlington House, London. 


200 


CHAPTER V 


DAWN OF THE GOLDEN AGE: BOTTICELLI 
AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 


Leonardo da Vinci as assimilator of the Realistic reforms — Botticelli as 
reactionary — His beginnings under Fra Filippo and Pollaiuolo — Height 
of his realistic achievement in Adoration of the Magi— Assertion of his 
fantastic vein in the Primavera— The Dante drawings and the dis- 
traught style of the later works, its aesthetic value — Minor Eccentrics: 
Filippino Lippi— Piero di Cosimo — Leonardo da Vinci, his gradual 
advance towards Chiaroscuro method, his ideals — His work with Ver- 
rocchio — The Adoration of the Kings, its disciplined richness — Cartoon 
of St. Ann — First Madonna of the Rocks — Leonardo at Milan. The 
Last Supper — At Florence again. The Battle Cartoon. Mona Lisa — 
Second Sojourn at Milan. The St. Ann, his influence — At Rome, in 
France and the end— Leonardo’s successors at Florence; Fra Bartolom- 
meo — Andrea del Sarto — Agnolo Bronzino — Pontormo — Decline of 
Florentine independence and of the School. 


The task before an ambitious young Florentine artist about 
1475 was one of assimilation. Pretty much all the knowledge 
essential for the new painting existed, but in scattered shape. 
Masaccio had modernized Giotto’s monumental patterns, and 
had found for himself the new structural values of light and 
shade. Domenico Veneziano had introduced the handier 
method of oil painting, and, with Piero della Francesca, had 
attempted novel refinements in paler tonalities. He and 
Paolo Uccello had worked out the mysteries of linear per- 
spective. Andrea del Castagno had achieved a systematic 
and learned anatomy. Antonio Pollaiuolo had added to this 
an extraordinary knowledge of the human body in violent ac- 
tion. Andrea Verrocchio had demonstrated that these real- 


istic strivings were compatible with grace. It had occurred to 
201 


202 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


no one to combine all these discoveries until Leonardo da 
Vinci reached his early maturity. ‘The synthesis worked out 
by him between 1480 and 1498, the dates of his unfinished 
Adoration of the Kings and Last Supper respectively, is the 
foundation on which Raphael built. Leonardo da Vinci is 
the pioneer of the Golden Age. 

It will help us to realize the greatness of his accomplish- 
ment to study first the career of a contemporary and friend, 
the exquisite artist, Sandro Botticelli. Botticelli, like Leon- 
ardo, came under the spell of Verrocchio’s fastidiousness, and 
went some distance in the direction of the new monumental 
beauty. Then abruptly he turned aside along solitary lines 
quite unprecedented, but akin to the mystic past of Siena. 
His great refusal of progress, his broken and eccentric career, 
give point to the humanistic centrality and social authority 
of Leonardo’s painting. The two men represent opposite 
escapes from the superficial brilliance of the art dominated 
by Ghirlandaio. Leonardo moved out towards the future, 
and has lived on as a fine inspiration of academic painting 
ever since. Botticelli withdrew into himself, and has survived 
flickeringly in the occasional admiration of kindred spirits. 
Both express, if in very different fashion, the profound dis- 
content that preluded a new era of art. It will help us to per- 
ceive how great Botticelli is in his solitary poetry, to consider 
two younger contemporaries, Filippino Lippi, his pupil, and 
Piero di Cosimo, an intelligent imitator of Leonardo, both 
of whom, sharing Botticelli’s discontent, also sought escape 
in self-assertiveness of an eccentric sort. As the modern age 
begins to dawn, the modern temperamental artist appears. 
The bottega begins to be a studio. Thus Sandro Botticelli? 
has a double importance for us — as an exquisite artist, and 
even more as the first individualist who strained sorely at 
the bounds imposed by the collective taste, required a select 
public, and painted to please himself. 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 203 


There is nothing of this romantic isolation in his origins. 
He was born a tanner’s son, in 1444, and brought up in the 
smiling country towards Careggi. At thirteen he was still at 
school, hence was better educated than the average painter. 
Soon he was put with a goldsmith, very likely his brother 
Antonio, whose nickname — II Botticello, the cask, para- 
doxically attached itself to the creator of the Primavera. 
Before his fifteenth year, 1459, young Botticelli was appren- 
ticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, the most sensitive eye of the time. 
Young Botticelli presumably painted on the later frescoes at 
Prato, and I believe may have been permitted to design cer- 
tain of the figures in The Feast of Herod. ‘Two early pictures 
of the Adoration of the Kings, both in the National Gallery, 
London, show us how whole-heartedly Botticelli adopted his 
master’s discursive style, how sedulously he sought variety 
and richness of gesture and facial expression. But these 
crowded compositions lack Fra Filippo’s direct geniality. 
They are already imagined before they are observed. Fra 
Filippo went to Spoleto some time before 1468 and soon died 
there. So Botticelli was perhaps on his own resources from his 
twenty-fourth year, though he was not inscribed in the Com- 
pany of St. Luke till 1472. What is certain is that he was 
fortifying himself by imitation of far more strenuous artists 
than his master. The delicate incisiveness of Verrocchio ap- 
pears as an occasional inspiration, the rugged power of An- 
tonio Pollaiuolo dominates his pictorial expression for many 
years. 

A group of early’ pictures shows strikingly the interplay 
of realistic influences with the assertion of his own originality. 
The delicately expressive Madonna, Figure 128, in Mrs. John 
L. Gardner’s collection, is based on Filippo Lippi’s Madonna 
in the Uffizi, Figure 103. The general arrangement is the 
same. But what a change in feeling! All the overt pictur- 
esque relations which Fra Filippo loved —the girlish Virgin 


204 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


praying to her child, the chubby baby clutching at its mother, 
the impish angel grinning out of the picture— all that is 


Fic. 128. Botticelli, Chigi Madon- oO Te 


na.—Mrs. ‘fohn L. Gardner, Boston. 


eliminated. The Virgin wistfully reaches for the ear of wheat 
signifying her Son’s body that must be broken. A well grown, 
reverent angel, enigmatically smiling, offers the grapes and 
wheat, symbols of the sacrament. ‘The relation is between 
the Madonna and this mysterious acolyte. Their conscious- 
ness of a prophetic rite gains emphasis and pathos from the 
only unconscious thing in the picture, the graceful babyish 
action of the Divine Child. The forms of mother and Child 
are those of Filippo Lippi, but with elimination of superfluous 
ornament and commonplace action. The reserved, half- 
concealed smile of the angel and his strange beauty derive 
from Andrea Verrocchio. You may trace it from his youth- 
ful David to his disciple’s Mona Lisa. The date of the picture 
is merely a good guess, but since it is free from the influence 
of Pollaiuolo, it may be before 1469. 

In that year the brothers Pollaiuolo undertook the painting 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 205 


of seven figures of the Virtues to decorate the wainscot behind 
the magistrates’ bench in the Mercanzia, the mercantile court. 
Evidently they were pressed for 
time, for they assigned one 
panel representing Fortitude, 
Figure 129, to Botticelli. John 
Ruskin has celebrated in elo- 
quent phrase this frail embod- 
iment of the courage of the 
mind. ‘“‘Worn, somewhat, and 
not a little weary; instead of 
standing ready for all comers, 
she is sitting — apparently in 
revery; her fingers playing rest- 
lessly and idly — nay, I think, 
even nervously about the hilt 
of her sword. For her battle is 
not to begin today, nor did it 
begin yesterday. Many a morn 
and even have passed since it 


began, and now — is this to be 
the ending of it? And if this— — Fyg, 129. Botticelli. Fortitude. 
by what manner of end?” — Uffizi. 

The passage beautifully illustrates the odd blend of purest 
insight and casual chatter in Ruskin’s criticism. Forget that 
the sword is a mace— Ruskin is never right in such trifles. 
Fortitude sits merely because her sister Virtues do so in.the 
imposed decorative scheme. The nervous action of the hands is 
chiefly an elegance. Yet the whole characterization expresses 
with singular felicity the alert and thoughtful charm of this 
Fortitude amid the stolid efigies of Antonio and Piero Pol- 
laiuolo. Ruskin, as often, is most wrong where it least matters. 
We have more prosaic business with the Fortitude —to note 
the pouting snub-nosed type, and the elaborate ornaments, 


206 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


which are Fra Filippo’s, the solidly drawn but ill-shapen foot, 
which is Pollaiuolo’s, and the sensitiveness, which is Botticelli’s 
own. 

A still more complete assimilation of Pollaiuolo’s energetic 
mode is revealed in the admirable little Judith, Figure 130, 
which must have been painted towards 1475. ‘he faces are 
still Fra Filippo’s, and he could have invented the eager dog- 
like obsequiousness of the maid. But the springy action and 
the fine, lean ankles and feet, the bony, expressive wrists and 
hands, the minutely featured landscape, are completely in 
Pollaiuolo’s vein. Botticelli’s specific invention is the sublima- 
tion of the theme — Judith’s sense of walking in a dream after 
the unspeakable ordeal of the night. And the flutter of the 
robes in the clean morning wind has a stylistic grace that 
amounts to Sandro’s signature. 

As he came into his thirty-fifth year, 1478, Botticelli painted 
two pictures so different that without conclusive evidence 
we should hardly believe them the work of a single mind’ and 
hand. The Adoration of the Kings, Figure 131, with the 
sturdy Medici portraits, sums up all Botticelli’s realistic 
achievement, shows him the greatest and most typical Floren- 
tine master of the moment, and proves that his way was easy 
to such triumphs of popularity as Ghirlandaio was soon to 
enjoy uncontested. The other picture, The Allegory of Spring, 
evinces a strange and to many repellant originality, indulges 
dreams not of this earth, appeals to experiences inaccessible 
save to the esthetically elect. It was an earnest of neglect 
and unpopularity, the opening of a solitary road that no 
artist would travel save under inner imperious impulsion. 

The Adoration of the Kings is composed after the fashion 
of Fra Filippo and rendered with all the improvements of Pol- 
laiuolo. The group of the Mother, Child and Joseph is set © 
high and well back, the minutely drawn ruin, with its grace of 
wall-flowers, and the peacock on the ruined edge of the masonry 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 207 


are again pure Fra Filippo, as are the juvenile charm of Our 
Lady and the alertness of the Bambino. In Fra Filippo’s 
best style, too, are the flanking groups of portraits which swing 
back towards the central motive, leaving the centre free. 


Fic. 131. Botticelli. Adoration of the Magi. — Uffizi. 


Here are great personnages set forth with dignity and force. 
Masaccio also has counted for much in these portraits, and 
Antonio Pollaiuolo for more. The Mage kneeling by the Child 
is Piero de’ Medici, the one in front with his back turned is 
Cosimo. The beautiful young king addressing him is prob- 
ably Giuliano, lately slain by the Pazzi conspirators. Lorenzo 
is unmistakable at the left with his proud military pose, his 
hands resting on a great sword. At the right, robed in yellow, 
is the fine manly figure of Botticelli himself. There are many 
other portraits of the most authoritative accent, but we have 
no means of identifying them. 


208 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Artistically this magnificent little picture suffers from twa 
centres of interest. It is an ambiguity, however, that would 
have troubled no contemporary Florentine. He was willing 


Fic. 132. Botticelli. Primavera — Allegory of Spring. — Uffizi. 


to take the sacred group for granted and to gaze delightedly 
at the figures of his rulers and benefactors. In technical 
expression the picture is established through light, shade, 
and color, its linear quality counting for rather little in the 
effect. It is a logical and attractive combination of all the 
realistic experiments of fifty years past, no single feature being 
over-emphasized. It is prose of a most convincing and elo- 
quent cadence. 

Before turning to a picture which is all poetry, the Prima- 
vera, we may profitably consider Botticelli’s portrait, the 
robust body, the moody sensual face. He was a celibate. 
One need not espouse the vagaries of a Freud to know that 
such men, when gifted with imagination, dream strange dreams. 
The Primavera, Figure 132, was painted for the Medici Villa 
of Castello, where later Botticelli placed his Birth of Venus 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 209 


and Signorelli his Pan as God of Music. All these pictures re- 
present that sudden homesickness for the idyllic scenes of 
classical antiquity which fell upon the Italian world about 
this time. The cassone painters, working for work-a-day 
people, had represented the mythologies as so many jolly 
stories. For the deeply cultured circle of the Medici, these 
retrospections were fraught with sadness. ‘The life where the 
gods moved among alluring nymphs and amusing fauns seemed 
infinitely far off and infinitely desirable. Through Horace and 
Virgil and Theocritus one could glimpse it tantalizingly. 
Modern poets, like Angelo Poliziano, could recover it faintly 
in Greek and Latin, or more rarely in Italian verse. But the 
Italian loves to see, and here was the difficulty. The brown 
soil had not yet yielded up the great store of old marbles. The 
actual look of the by-gone Golden Age, which within half a 
century was to become matter of archaeological certainty, was 
now matter of hesitant intuition. One could brood over the 
old poets, arrange masques in which lightly robed Tuscan girls 
played the nymph or goddess — whatever expedient was used 
to live oneself back, the visual ingredients of the dream were 
inevitably local and Tuscan. Such pictures as the Primavera 
represent this transient and appealing mood. They tremble 
with unfulfilled aspirations, breathe exquisite nostalgias, 
perpetuate as no other records do the very soul of the humanists 
that surrounded Lorenzo the Magnificent. 

For the fundamental decorative arrangement of the pic- 
ture, white forms swaying before a vertical paling, Botti- 
celli skilfully borrowed the motive of Pollaiuolo’s engraving, 
the Ten Nudes. Figure 109. From Pollaiuolo, too, come the 
nervous contours, the wiry ankles, and slender feet, and the 
curiously sprung knees. The old poets Lucretius and Horace 
give just the hint for the persons of the idyl. Lucretius 
tells of the coming of Spring blown in by the West wind, of 
Flora strewing flowers before, Figure 133, with Venus and her 


210 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


son as witnesses. And Horace tells how the three graces with 
ungirt robes dance before Mercury. But Botticelli has contrib- 


Fic. 133. Botticelli. Primavera. Detail. Venus, Flora, Spring, 
Zephyr. — Uffizi. 


uted what gives the work its penetrating, sad charm. His is the 
gloomy screen of orange trees and olives, the carpet of spring 
flowers, the billowing lines that sweep across the panel. It 
is conceived in two great rhythms of motion. ‘The wave that 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 211 


is suave in playful Spring becomes crisp and sharp in the robe 
of Flora, and is nearly arrested in the heavy drapery of Venus, 
it passes with her raised hand to the shimmering veil of the danc- 
ing Graces, and dies in the firmly set form of Mercury, whose 
uplifted arm carries the movement into the steady background, 
which stabilizes it all. Even to mention the particular finesses 
and beauties of this fantastically lovely scene would require 
an essay. I have made a fuller if very imperfect analysis in 
my book, “Estimates in Art.” Now it is best to note merely 
that the only joyous forms are Zephyrus, Spring and Cupid, 
the rest are sad or enigmatically grave, as is Flora. Though 
they celebrate the renewal of life through love in springtime, 
those whose immortality has witnessed many springs carry in 
their faces and bearing the old knowledge that life and love 
are constantly reborn under death sentence, and that what 
is renewed spring after spring has but 


“The frail duration of a flower.” 


Again and again the poets have told this to unregarding man. 
Nobody has made it visible save Botticelli. 

I suppose only a score of people at the time knew how fine 
the Primavera was, and a few hundred in the world to-day may 
know it. The thing was hidden from the public, and Botti- 
celli was painting himself into the most obscure sort of glory. 
- In his remaining thirty-two years, there are a few reversions 
to his realistic vein, but his most characteristic works merely 
carry on the recondite charm, the acute and personal rhythms 
of the Primavera. 

In 1480 was painted the Faust-like figure of St. Augustine. 
Figure 134. One feels in the gnarled features and hand clutch- 
ing the breast the burden of lifelong meditation on the terrible 
mysteries of free will and God’s eternal decrees. It is the efigy 
of one who has agonized in thought, and is still seeking by 
that Calvary of the mind a tense and hazardous peace. 


2a HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


The next year Botticelli went to Rome to take charge of 
the decoration of the Sistine Chapel. We have already con- 
sidered his best fresco there, Moses in Midian. Figure 114. 

Of the two others—the Tempta- 


tion of Christ, and the De- 
struction of Korah—we need 
only add that they are im- 
mensely rich in details, effective 
as narratives, and as decorative 
arrangements surpassed on the 
Sistine walls only by Signorelli 
and Perugino. 

There are rare moments of 
something like serenity in Botti- 
celli’s troubled career. One was 
when he painted the Pallas and 
the Centaur, and another when 


Fic. 134. Botticelli. St. Augus- he designed the loveliest of his 
tine. Fresco. — Ognissanti. round panels, the Madonna with 


Six Angels, in the Uffizi, Figure 135. Unlike the more famous 


and popular Magnificat, it is in 
immaculate preservation. The 
composition is subtler and less 
obvious, the worn and burdened 
look of the Madonna oppressed 
by her tragic fate, more specific 
and appealing. The late Herbert 
P. Horne, Botticelli’s best biog- 
rapher, sets the picture about 
1487. About the same time were 
done those nuptial frescoes for 
Lorenzo Tornabuoni and _ his 


Fic. 135. Botticelli. Madonna 
with six Angels. — Uffizi. 


bride, Giovanna degli Albizzi. Torn from the villa walls at 
Careggi, they are now among the treasures of the Louvre. 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 213 


Lorenzo is represented as received by the seven liberal arts, 
Giovanna as presented to Venus by the Graces. We have 
seen in the last chapter how these young people shared and 
illustrated the doom impending over Medicean Florence. 


Fic. 136. Botticelli. Birth of Venus. — Uffizt. 


Botticelli captures, if not their look, at least a fine symbol 
for their as yet unchallenged beauty and discretion. 

A little earlier perhaps he added to the Primavera at Cas- 
tello the Birth of Venus, Figure 136. It is conceived in the 
same bold rhythms, which this time converge on the slight, 
smooth form of Venus and are steadied by the horizon and the 
trees. Compared with the Primavera, the whole thing is 
less rich, varied and naturalistic. Everything is more schematic 
and conventional; gold is freely used without realistic pretext. 
The wistful mood is still that of the Primavera. Venus comes 
to earth with no joyous expectation. She glimpses unfulfilled 
desires, the eternally deferred goal of earthly love. She obeys 
a destiny with resignation and a pensive humility — almost 
asks pardon for the confusion she is fated to produce among 
mortals. These involutions and refinements have nothing 


214 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


to do with the whole-souled sensuousness of classical anti- 
quity, they have everything to do with that scrupulous balanc- 
ing of divine and earthly love which was the standing problem 
of the Neo-Platonists surrounding Lorenzo the Magnificent. 


Fic. 137. Botticelli. Dante and Beatrice in Paradise. — Print Room, 
Berlin. ' 


During the ’8os Botticelli was much occupied with the 
illustration of a great manuscript of the “Divine Comedy.” 
Figure 137. These outlines in silverpoint retouched with the 
pen find their equals only in the best Far Eastern art. The 
line whips and dances and swirls across the parchment, halt- 
ing and turning to define a detail, then speeding anew on its task 
of suggesting motion. Figures that float, groups that march or 
dance as one, trailing smoke of incense — these volatile fea- 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 215 


tures are rendered with the most energetic delicacy. And the 
most incredible episodes of Dante’s poem gain credence with 
the eye through the deftest use of the pure line. It hardens 
to suggest bone and sinew, tightens to express joints that 
bear weight and preserve balance, loosens and gallops to give 
the flutter of drapery over twinkling limbs. And all this is 
done with a thin pen line that hardly changes thickness or 
blackness — done with a touch as light as a feather and yet as 
firm as the swing of a draughtsman’s compass. The study of 
such drawings is a liberal education in the esthetics of pure 
line. 
These drawings freely distort the actual forms for the sake 
of greater expressiveness. Such distortion is the character- 
istic mark of Botticelli’s latest style. One may note it in the 
furniture panels which tell the story of St. Zenobius and the 
tragic lot of the Roman heroines, Lucretia and Virginia; in the 
Annunciation of the Uffizi and the Last Communion of St. 
Jerome, in the Metropolitan Museum. The new manner is 
characterized by habitually vehement expression. Intensity 
becomes morbid, effective withal. We have to do with tor- 
tured but very fine nerves. What personal history is involved 
we can merely surmise. We know, however, that Botticelli 
followed eagerly the theocratic revolution of Savonarola and 
suffered deep chagrin when the attempt to make Florence 
a city of God collapsed amid sordid political jealousies. His 
art becomes that of a Piagnone, a Savonarolist, a contemner 
of the careless world. His method changes. The figures are 
unmodelled and flat, they hurtle wildly and glisten metallically 
before airless landscapes. Most of the hard-won Florentine 
realisms drop out, and the linear rhythms recall the Gothic 
poignancy of Simone Martini. 

Perhaps the finest picture of this sort is the Calumny of 
Apelles, Figure 138, painted about 1490, and now in the Uffizi. 
It recreates after an anecdote of Lucian, made current by 


216 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Leonbattista Alberti, a lost masterpiece by Apelles, which 
was painted to convince Alexander the Great of the evil of 
calumny. An innocent prisoner is haled before an ignorant 
judge. Calumny bearing a torch drags him by the hair. 


Fic. 138. Botticelli. The Calumny of Apelles. — Uffizi. 


Treachery and Deceit act as her tiring maids. ‘The sordid 
figure of Envy is her guide to a judge into whose asses’ ears 
Ignorance and Suspicion whisper their counsels. Naked Truth 
pleads in vain for the victim as Remorse turns to her with 
sullen helplessness. By a pictorial irony, the sinister whirling 
group is set in a stately court adorned with statues of mag- 
nanimous heroes of old, and one glimpses through the rich 
arches a cloudless sky and an untroubled sea. Very rich in 
imaginative content, ornate in its use of color and gold, sharp 
and definite in its rhythms, discreet in its expressive distor- 
tions, this is perhaps the masterpiece of Botticelli’s late 
style. 

But one regards with surely almost pleasure and with more 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 217, 


lively sympathy the little Nativity in the National Gallery, 
Figure 139, a celestial idyl in sentiment, and of greatest beauty 
of muted coloring. Above the shed where the Virgin Mother 
worships her Divine Child, a dancing ring of angels hovers. 
They hold olive branches from which depend martyrs’ crowns. 
Wreathed shepherds, figures from some Theocritan idyl, kneel 
outside the shed. Below, angels eagerly embrace three youthful 
crowned figures, while impish bafHled fiends lurk in crevices 
of the rocks. ‘lhe three figures may well typify Savonarola 
and his two fellow-martyrs. A Greek inscription gives the date 
of 1500 and hints at the fall of Savonarola and the shame of 
the French invasion. There is a tenderness about the picture 
that recalls the Primavera, but it is more elusive and unearthly, 
more implicit in every bit of the workmanship itself than 
dependent on explicit symbolism. 

What Botticelli could achieve in stark tragedy at this 
time is shown in the Pieta of the Munich gallery, a master- 
piece which many critics have quite unaccountably ascribed 
to an inferior imitator. It is of tremendous effect. The com- 
pressing rocks seem to confine a grief too great to be liberated 
in space. A shudder concentrates itself upon the fair, youth- 
ful body of the dead Christ. One assists at a cosmic mourning, 
the intolerable tension of which is mercifully relieved in the 
swooning form of the Mother of Sorrows. ‘The colors are 
sombre, the whole effect fairly sculptural, though mass is at- 
tained more by linear accents than by systematic light and 
shade. Balance and pose obey not a law of physics but one 
of feeling. 

The picture may be one of Botticelli’s latest. He lived on 
till 1510, a lonely and indulged eccentric. He witnessed the 
youthful triumphs of Raphael and Michelangelo at Florence, 
and saw the superb maturity of his friend Leonardo da Vinci. 
He saw the artistic world move away from himself towards 
ideals of gravity and decorum and disciplined monumentality. 


218 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Fic. 139. Botticelli. Mystical Nativity. — London. 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 219 


He could have followed that high road himself. Instead he 
had sought a romantic self-expression leading to an impasse. 
At least he had made the impasse singularly thrilling. Being 
a wag as well as a poet, he had his compensations for neglect 
and doubtless he never regretted his impolitic choice. Among 
artists of febrile and romantic fibre he is one of the greatest. 
To know him thoroughly is an incomparable exercise in ex- 
quisite feeling. 

Taken in its social aspect, Botticelli’s later style is a pro- 
test against the current, superficial, narrative and decorative 
modes. Against prevailing successful commonplace, he op- 
poses a highly refined idiosyncracy. While the more stolid 
artists of the end of the century were content to rework Ghir- 
landaio’s glittering vein, the more sensitive spirits sought dis- 
tinction in eccentricity. Eccentricity appears whenever an 
old style has gone stale and a new one is imminent. It is the 
natural expression of souls too independent to conform and 
too weak to reconstruct. The grotesque was in the air. Luigi 
Pulci in the ‘‘Morgante Maggiore” burlesques the ideal ro- 
mances of chivalry, and mixes the old clear categories of good 
and evil. Lorenzo de’ Medici at once mimics and caricatures 
the simplicity of the peasant pastorals. Cynicism runs riot 
in the short-story writers and in the new comedy. There is a 
confusion of standards, a new complexity of appreciation, 
that at once bewilders and allures delicate spirits. Thus they 
really express such a moment of hesitation better than stronger 
or more ordinary artists. So a Post-Impressionist of today may 
have a high symptomatic importance even though his art be 
null, and a Filippino Lippi and Piero di Cosimo really tell us 
more about the time-spirit than a Leonardo da Vinci. 

Filippino? was born in 1457, at Prato, and presumably re- 
ceived his first instruction from his father, Fra Filippo. At 
fifteen we find him an orphan and studying with Botticelli, 
whom he probably assisted at Rome in 1482. At twenty-seven, 


Z20 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


in 1484, he had the extraordinary honor of completing Masac- 
cio’s frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel. Doubtless he had his 
great predecessor’s sketches to aid him. With a somewhat 
lighter accent, he imitated as he might Masaccio’s simple and 


Fic. 140. Filippino Lippi. St. Peter before Nero. Detail of Fresco. 
— Brancacct Chapel. 


massive construction in light and shade. Filippino’s Peter 
before the Proconsul, Figure 140, and Crucifixion of St. Peter 
are of a gravity and weight to have passed for Masaccio’s 
with good critics. But the fine portraits are distinctive 
for the later date, as are the portraits and the graceful 
kneeling boy painted opposite in the fresco left unfinished by 
Masaccio. 

As a work of pious assimilation, Filippino’s frescoes are 
amazing; all his more original work is so much falling-off from 
his beginnings. His characteristic sensitive prettiness may be 
best observed in the altar-piece in the Badia representing St. 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 221 


Bernard’s Vision of the Virgin. Figure 141. As he writes her 
praises, she approaches his desk escorted by eager angels. The 
scenic picturesqueness of the 
landscape, the accentuated pret- 
tiness of the faces are character- 
istic. Superficially like Botticelli, 
Filippino is less selective and 
always more sentimental. He 
is rudely shaken out of a mode 
in which he is attractive by the 


advent of the new giants of 


painting, Leonardo and Signo- 


relli. In his last work, painted Fic. he tte Lippe. 
about 1502 for the Strozzi Bernard’s Vision. — Badia. 
Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, he spends himself in super- 
fluous and ineffective inventions, — trophies, archzologi- 
cal ornaments. ‘To lend impressiveness and tragedy to the 
martyrdom of St. Philip and St. James, or to the miracle 
of Drusiana, Figure 142, he has recourse to hideous contor- 
tions of mouth and brows, to creaking joints and bursting 
muscles, to clamor and sensationalism of all sorts. It is the 
bankruptcy of the gentle ‘spirit who only twenty years earlier 
had shown himself almost a great artist in the Carmine, and 
only ten years earlier had proved himself an accomplished 
decorator, at the Minerva, Rome. And the pity of this plunge 
into competitive and hopeless exhibitionism is that Filippino 
was a man of taste and character, a collector of classical an- 
tiques, an obliging and generous spirit. He died in 1504 at the 
moment when Leonardo da Vinci was planning a real and suc- 
cessful sensation for Florence, in The Fight for the Standard. 
If Filippino became an eccentric through pressure of cir- 
cumstances, Piero di Cosimo* was one by nature. Born in 
1462, he soon came under the dullest of masters, Cosimo 
Rosselli. “To Cosimo’s four hopeless frescoes in the Sistine 


222 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Fic. 143. Piero di Cosimo. Primitive Man. Spalliera panel. — Metro- 
politan Museum, N.Y. 


Fic. 142. Filippino Lippi. Raising of Drusiana by St. John. —S. M. 
Novella, Florence. 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 223 


Chapel he added certain vivacious features, and there he 
learned to know some of the ablest artists of his day. Always 
a bachelor and recluse, he pursued serious studies in imitation 
of such stern realists as Antonio 
Pollaiuolo and Luca Signorelli. 
He lived sordidly in his bottega, 
literally from hand to mouth, on 
the eggs which he boiled in his 
glue pot, in weekly batches. 
Alone he planned strange my- 
thologies, bestially pungent, and 
there he thought out odd terrible 
pageants which shocked and 
enthralled his Florence. And as 
he made these bizarre inventions, 
he mocked them and himself. ee 
His admirations were shifting — — fyg. 444. Piero di Cosimo. Cleo 
now Signorelli, again the Flemish patra. — Chantilly. 
realists and Leonardo: incompatible attractions. 

You may sense his quality in two wall panels, now in the 
Metropolitan Museum, made for some palace. Piero had 
read over the legend of primitive man as told by Ovid, and 
quickly his mind bred phantoms. First he conceived a state 
where dominion trembled between man and the brute crea- 
tion. Savage men with the unfair advantage of fire are 
exterminating the beasts, among whom fight those half- 
men, the centaurs, Figure 143. In the companion panel the 
mood changes abruptly from strife and tumult to the 
quaintly pastoral strains of a stone-age minuet. We assist 
at a troglodyte water-party. Lovely woman dominates the 
new scene. The now domesticated centaur proudly bears 
her. In courtly fashion skin-clad warriors hand her into a 
rude pleasure raft which may perhaps waft the picnickers to 
the joys of a cannibal feast. These inventions have immense 


224. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


ad 


fantastic power, and their real originality by no means pre- 
cludes the suspicion that the artist is smiling at his own in- 
genuity and at our complaisance. 

Take again his Cleopatra, Figure 144, at Chantilly. The 


Fic. 145. Piero di Cosimo. Death of Procris. — London. 


snub-nosed Florentine beauty airs her abundant charms in 
a romantic landscape, while the asp does his by no means dis- 
agreeable duty. What a travesty of the dignity of Plutarch, 
and how fetching it is as distinguished burlesque! 

Cautiously and perhaps grudgingly, in the early years of 
the new century, Piero follows the improvements of Leo- 
nardo. This influence is palpable in the Rescue of Andromeda, 
in the Uffizi. The chained princess carelessly displays her 
appetizing attractions, while the leering and hungry dragon 
lurches on the beach and surveys his prey. High up in the 
sky is hope, in the brisk, knightly figure of Perseus. A musi- 
cal party lolls deliciously on the strand, equally prepared to 
enjoy a heroic rescue or a monster at feeding time. We are 
in the superbly irresponsible world of the fairy tale, and the 
thrilling raconteur has his clever tongue in his cheek. 

Exceptionally, as in that wistful poesy, The Death of 
Procris, Figure 145, at London, Piero is serious enough. The 
gitlish body lies very quiet amid meadow flowers. A puzzled 
faun and a more comprehending hound are very touching 
mourners amid the unregarding beasts and birds of a tranquil 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 225 


lake-side afternoon. Such refinements of sentiment are often 
the compensation for an unstable spirit. The vein is rare in 
Piero, who, aside from his mythological ironies and quite con- 
ventional religious pieces, is also a vivacious portraitist as the 
galleries of New Haven, Conn., the Hague, and London 
attest. 

Piero lived on till 1521, surviving both Leonardo and 
Raphael. ‘The greatest artistic effort of modern times had 
spent itself before his eyes, and he had mostly been content 
to be witty. He represents at least a fine scorn of his flimsy 
training, and remains a consummate type of the artist who 
lives, like a bear in winter, on his own fat. 

After a long detour, we are once more on the high road. 
Perugino, with his simple and gracious symmetries, had shown 
the painting of the end of the century what ailed it. But his 
cure was too obvious to be acceptable until a youngster of 
Raphael’s entirely modest intelligence should come along. 
The reform, as often in other than artistic affairs, had to 
be made from within, and was conducted by one who had much 
sympathy with the random richness of the Early Renaissance 
style, Leonardo da Vinci.’ 

Leonardo’s discoveries, pursued with the most patient 
and gradual care, shocked no one and were quickly taken up. 
He was nearly thirty before he reached consciousness of his 
mission, and having attained his artistic end, he dropped 
painting, with a kind of scorn, for mathematical and scientific 
investigation. In his admirable “Tractate on Painting” 
he has left the fullest and most eloquent records of his ideals. 
The first is that the painter must know clearly what he 1s 
about. ‘‘Without good theory no good practice is possible.” 
Next the artist should be in a filial relation to nature, admir- 
ing and imitating her directly, and not through the eyes of 
other artists. As to the main object of painting, Leonardo 
wavers between two definitions. Repeatedly he insists that 


226 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


that painting is greatest which through the postures of the 
body shows the emotions of the soul. As often, he uses a 
more technical definition —the chief business of painting is 
to create a sense of relief or projection where there is none. 
This relief is effected by delicate and accurate distribution of 
light and shade. Light and dark are conceived in a double 
fashion, as factors in relief and as offering intrinsic beauties in 
their gradations. We have a refinement on the method of 
Masaccio, which is merely structural and dramatic and with- 
out much intrinsic charm. But the new beauty of chiaroscuro 
soon turns out to be incompatible with the old beauty of 
frank color. Pictures become dusky and mysterious, tending 
to black and white values. Ever since Leonardo, academic 
painting has had the sore limitation of regarding shadow as 
negation of color. It is the defect of his teaching and practice. 

On broader matters, however, Leonardo is profoundly right. 
Seeing is a mental process and should be selective. Represent 
all the muscles emphatically, and your nude will look like a 
sack full of nuts. Accuracy is necessary, but is of no value 
without accompanying dignity and grace. Choose the most 
gracious aspects of reality, the pervasive moderate light of 
evening rather than the sharp glare of the overhead sun. Ob- 
serve deaf-mutes so that you may learn the possibilities of 
expression through gestures. Seek equilibrium and an active 
and vital balance whether in the pose of the single figure or 
in the relations of the figures to each other. Get the action 
right, and afterwards add the details. These are some of the 
precepts which Leonardo scribbled off about the year 1500 
when he was nearing fifty and his work as a painter was almost 
over. He is really describing the principles under which, 
while accepting the richness and variety of the early Renais- 
sance style, he had once for all put it in order. 

Of course this was a very gradual process. To the end Leo- — 
nardo retained something of a primitive quality, and he was by 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 227 


no means precocious. He was born in 1452, the lovechild of 
a peasant girl of Vinci and a young Florentine notary, Piero 
da Vinci. His earliest recollections must have been of the hills 
and distant mountain prospects of his native hamlet of Vinci, 
between Florence and Pisa. But he was soon taken into his 
father’s home at Florence, and given an education which 
hardly exceeded the proverbial “‘Three R’s’”. Just when he was 
put with the painter and sculptor, Andrea Verrocchio, is un- 
certain, but it can hardly have been later than Leonardo’s 
thirteenth year, 1465. As a painter, Verrocchio exists for us 
chiefly in the work of his pupils. As a sculptor, however, 
he is a definite enough figure. His aim was plainly to infuse 
the new realism with an aristocratic elegance. What a young 
patrician is his David composing himself for the ordeal with a 
restrained well-bred smile! There is a splendid dandyism in 
his valor. Or consider the Madonna in terra-cotta, with her 
ornate head-dress, rich brooch, and carefully arranged robe, 
her almost too sweet self-possession. She is a clue to the 
fastidiousness of Verrocchio. Again consider the proud 
hard face and the marvelously firm and delicate hands of the 
unknown lady Verrocchio cut in marble. These things are 
dominant for the early development of Leonardo, as the alert, 
powerful and aggressive Colleont monument is for his later 
heroic creations. Something of Verrocchio’s scrupulous and 
eminently dilatory character also passed over to his brilliant 
pupil. Verrocchio remained a bachelor and wholly devoted to 
his art, yet he took eighteen years to give to his famous bronze 
group of Christ and St. Thomas its dignity and sensitive feeling. 
Leonardo remained some ten years or more with Verrocchio, 
painting many works that are lost to us, and a few, I believe, 
that we may identify. In this most contested matter I follow 
in the main the views of Dr. Sirén. 

For many years Leonardo ventured little on his own account, 
following with docility the directions of his master. The single 


228 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


painting which we may with certainty ascribe to Verrocchio, 
the Baptism of Christ, Figure 146a, in the Uffizi, already bears 
traces of Leonardo’s hand. The general composition is bor- 
rowed from an insignificant panel of Baldovinetti’s. The 


BSS S : Rose 


Fic. 146. Leonardo da Vinci, Head at Left; Verrocchio, Head at Right. 
Details from Verrocchio’s Baptism. — Uffizi. 
stalwart ugly forms derive from Pollaiuolo. Delightful fea- 
tures added in oils by Leonardo are the exquisite angel at 
the left, Figure 146, and the vaporous distance and mountain 
skyline. We may surmise that these improvements were added 
about 1470 to a picture started several years earlier. One 
other picture was designed by Verrocchio and finished after 
his death in 1488 by his assistant, Lorenzo di Credi. This 
Madonna, in the cathedral of Pistoia, affords an excellent 
contrast between the puffy forms of Lorenzo and the firm and 
living contours of Leonardo. The famous Annunciation in the 
Uffizi, Figure 147, seems a kind of joint product, the actual 
painting being by Leonardo, the badly balanced composition 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 229 


and intrusive heavy lectern, as well as the rather cheap at- 


titude of surprise of the Virgin, representing a perfunctory 


mood of Verrocchio. The vista of remote mountains hanging 


pale in the blue sky is such as only 
Leonardo could have created. 
The delightful Gabriel also seems 
wholly his invention. The com- 
position again rests on one of 
Baldovinetti’s, at 5S. Miniato, 
and the date of the picture may 
be about 1475. Of about the 
same date is a Madonna with an 
Angel in the National Gallery, 
which may well be a composi- 
tion of Verrocchio interpreted by 
Leonardo. The note of sweet- 
ness is a little forced, as in most 


Fic. 146a. Verrocchio and Leo- 
nardo. Baptism of Christ.—Uffzi. 


work of this kind. We meet Leonardo in his own right a little 
earlier, in a pen sketch of a broad landscape dated in mid- 


Fic. 147. Leonardo da Vinci under Verrocchio’s Direction. Annunciation. 


— Uffizi. 


summer of 1473, Figure 148. Its spaciousness and schematic 


handling of horizontals ally it to the landscape backgrounds 


we have been considering. The last work of this Verrocchian 


230 HISTORY OF IFALIAN PAINTING 


character is the Portrait of a Girl, in the Liechtenstein Gallery, 
Vienna. Here we are in a field where Leonardo and his 
master are almost indistinguishable, but the picturesquely 


3S x ag: peg 


Fic. 148. Leonardo da Vinci. Landscape. Pen Drawing. — Uffizi. 


broken background, the bit of landscape, and the ease of 
the contours, speak for the younger man. As late as 1476, his 
twenty-fifth year, Leonardo was still with Verrocchio. He 
probably set up his own bottega a year or so afterwards. 


Fic. 149. Leonardo da Vinci. Annunciation. — Lowogre. 


There followed four or five years of eager experiment, 
much being planned and rather little carried to completion. 
Relieved from the pressure of a master, actual painting seems 
to have become irksome. He loves to sketch, to turn his 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 231 


designs over until they reach perfection, leaving them in the 
condition of the swiftest and most accurate notations. Lack 
of system and paralysis of will are already apparent. For 
about two years of this joyous and irresponsible creation he 
remained a primitive. Such he is in the idyllic little Annun- 
ciation of the Louvre,® Figure 149, which should be for its 
fluent technic no earlier than 1476. He takes the motive which 
he had previously done under restrictions, reduces it to a 
symmetrical order, rejects distracting details, floods it with 
warm light breaking through ragged apertures of the trees, and 
invests it with a penetrating humility and grace. The little 
picture, which many critics set too early, is really Leonardo’s 
declaration of independence. It shows features which antici- 
pate his mature style — a combination of a severe geometrical 
symmetry in figure composition with a romantically strange 
setting and lighting. 

Of less import is the unpretentious little Madonna of the 
Flower, recently discovered, and in the Hermitage, at Petro- 
grad. It is authenticated by numerous composition sketches. 
Its vivacity and youthful lightness of effect are entirely in 
Verrocchio’s manner, nothing is new but heavier shadows 
and more emphatic modelling. 

On a sheet of drawings in the Uffizi, which characteris- 
tically combines with sketches of men’s heads studies of ma- 
chinery, we read “This day I began the two Virgin Marys.” 
The day is effaced, but it is a month in 1478, ending in —bre 
— September, October or November. One of these Madonnas 
is, no doubt, the Madonna of the Flower.’ As to the other we 
have no certainty, but the sketches of this time show at least 
five madonnas in process of invention. A Madonna holding 
a mischievous Child who hugs a writhing cat, a Madonna with 
a Dish of Fruit, a Madonna kneeling before the Child, a 
theme later developed into the Madonna of the Rocks; a 
Madonna seated on the Ground, and a Madonna seated in the 


232 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 
open with the Christchild and St. John. Dr. Jens Thys thinks 


the last composition may be the one actually begun as a 
picture, since such early Raphaels as the Belle Jardiniére 
seem to imply such a picture as their model. We do well to 


Fic. 150. Leonardo da Vinci. Pen Sketches for the Madonna of the Cat. 
— British Museum. 


turn from such speculations to the marvelous sketches for 
these Madonnas, Figure 150. Nothing firmer, lighter or 
more charming can be imagined. Of the line, thinned to a 
hair or widened to a blot, there is the completest control. 
These little figures, a couple of inches high at the most and 
often of thumb-nail minuteness, may be enlarged to life size 
without losing in structure or character. Nothing shows better 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 233 


the sheer fecund genius of Leonardo than these sheets, 
crowded with figures, scribbled with his right-to-left hand- 
writing, and slantingly shaded from upper left downwards, 
after the fashion of a lefthanded draughtsman. ‘They show 
how Leonardo worked in spurts of inspiration, creating a 
dozen lovely compositions and contented with none. They 
represent so many tensely joyous halfhours, with doubtless 
long intervals of other activities and withal of sheer brooding 
and unrecorded observation. ‘They help one grasp the spas- 
modic and discontinuous quality of Leonardo’s genius — 
why the actual execution of pictures was ever a matter of 
pain and drudgery to him. Up to his twenty-ninth year he 
apparently made no prolonged effort of any sort, but spent 
himself furiously in separate investigations. ‘Then he pulled 
himself together for a great picture, and though it too never 
got beyond the underpainting, it broke the new path to the 
Golden Age. 

For several years Leonardo had turned over the theme 
of an Adoration of the Child in his sketch books. These desul- 
tory inventions were brought abruptly to a focus in March 
1481, when he agreed to do an altar-piece for the monks of 
S. Donato at Scopeto. We have the best circumstantial evi- 
dence for identifying this piece with the unfinished Adoration 
of the Kings, now in the Uffizi. When we live ourselves into 
this dusky and mysterious sketch we step out of the early 
Renaissance into a new, ardent, rich and ordered region of 
invention such as the world had not witnessed since the glory 
of Greece faded. The composition went through at least 
three main stages. At first, as we see from a pen study in 
the Bonnat Museum, at Bayonne, an Adoration of the 
Shepherds was considered; the Madonna kneeling over the 
Christ between flanking groups of worshippers. The 
scheme was rejected as too thin and obvious. A picture of 
Lorenzi di Credi’s shows us its limited possibilities. Then the 


234 HISTORY OF ITALIAN Pare 


picture became. an Adoration of the Kings, with the thatched 
shed, much action in the foreground group and a ruined amphi- 
theatre in the background. This sketch in the Louvre, Fig- 
ure 151, contains all the elements of the picture, but an extra- 
ordinary work of clarification 
and refinement remained to be 
done. ‘The figures were studied 
and restudied till they reached 
both highest expressiveness and 
individuality,’ and an exact re- 
lation to the dense and intricate 
articulation of the foreground 
group. Often there are half a 
dozen separate studies for each 
motive. The central group was 
more closely massed till it be- 


came a rose of eager faces and 
Fig. 151. Leonardo. Sketch for flickering hands and kneeling 
Adoration. — Louvre. : : 

forms pressing inward towards 
the Child. To increase this concentration, a mound is erected 
behind ‘the group shutting it off from the wide background. 
To steady the group, the Madonna is no longer swung athwart 
the motion, but her nearly straight position becomes a sort 
of axis carried up by the trees above. In the richness, variety 
and animation of the compact group of adorers, Leonardo has 
met the Early Renaissance on its own ground and outdone it. 
In the wider setting he still observes the old precepts, but in 
a profounder and more significant sense. He has swept the 
traditional shed aside and opened up a world, a world furtive 
and active and combatant in its own wilfulness — playing, 
hiding, and fighting amid the crumbling ruins of old civiliza- 
tions, and before distant towering crags which were there be- 
fore civilization or man himself was; a world oblivious of the 
sublime mystery accomplishing itself in the kings who pay — 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 235 


homage to a Babe. What an ironic substitute for the joyous 


pastoralism with which contemporary artists invested their 
pictures of the Epiphany! 


The Adoration of the Kings, Figure 152, is the richest, most 
complicated, most beautifully ordered picture of its century; 


Fig. 152. Leonardo da Vinci. Adoration of the Magi. Underpainting. 
— Uffizi. 


even Leonardo was not to surpass it simply as a composition. 
Like all rich things it will bear many analyses. You may 
consider it as a triangle, with the reciprocal forms enriched, 
or, with Dr. Thys, as the combination of two radiating mo- 
tives, one centred on the Madonna’s face, the other on the 
soft alert body of the Child. Such analyses are only im- 
portant as temporary aids to understanding of the main fact 


236 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


that in the making of such a masterpiece a clear and subtile 
geometry is involved. Later Leonardo was to declare that 
there is no science which cannot undergo mathematical demon- 
stration, and he probably would have added —no art. Of 
his own art at least the saying is true. It may have been not 
so much his native indolence that arrested a work which had 
claimed months of passionate preparation at the moment when 
creation was at its height, as the conviction that it would 
lose something if fully realized. One can see how he loved 
the summary touches of dark and light, the swift, sufficient 
evocation of body and soul which he had learned from Masaccio. 
He may have hated to cover up such work, and a critic today 
may well be in doubt whether the gain in finishing it would 
have atoned for the loss. Or Leonardo da Vinci may already 
have been called to Milan and a new artistic life. However 
that be, the monks of Scopeto, after a long wait, turned 
to Filippino Lippi, who had already undertaken one lapsed 
commission for Leonardo, and he promptly achieved an Adora- 
tion of the Kings which only shows how inimitable Leonardo 
was, and how little mere richness counts in any picture. 

For two years between 1481 and 1483, there is silence. It 
seems to me that in this time we may set the crowning of his 
early work in the Madonna of the Rocks at the Louvre and 
the Cartoon of St. Ann at London. The Madonna of the 
Rocks, Figure 153, is the logical outcome of a half dozen 
Adorations which we may trace through the drawings of 1478. 
A sheet of sketches in the Metropolitan Museum shows him 
turning the theme over, rejecting the established profile arrange- 
ment of Fra Filippo, and hitting on the formal pyramidal pattern 
which appears in the picture itself. There the pyramid is felt not 
merely in plane, but also in depth. The forms and faces are 
superbly tense without either rigidity or the fluency of Leon- 
ardo’s later work. The setting is primitive, with minutely 
studied textures of rock and crisp shapes of wall flowers. 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 237 


Everything derives from Fra Filippo and Botticelli, but with 
new meaning. The romantic strangeness of the setting, the 
glimpses of sky and opening in the rock, the sifting in of light 
from the heart of the picture itself, the broad contrast of the 
formality of the figure arrange- 
ment with the picturesque wild- 
ness of the setting — all this is 
purest Leonardo and represents 
the culmination of many experi- 
ments. One can trace this idea 
of irregularly broken light and 
an informal screen as foil for a 
geometrical pattern, from the lit- 
tle Annunciation of the Louvre, 
through the unfinished St. Jer- 
ome of the Vatican. The Early 
Renaissance steps into the back- 
ground, where it belongs. Leo- 
nardo never rejects it; he fulfils 


it with an exquisite sense of pro- 


portion. — ae 
If the first Madonna of the Fig. 153. Leonardo. Madonna of 


the Rocks. — Louvre. 

Rocks was painted before 1482, 

in Florence, so probably was the cartoon of the Madonna with 
St. Ann, Figure 127, perhaps the most precious single work 
that Leonardo has left us. The inwardness of the relation be- 
tween the two women is in the mood of the Adoration of the 
Kings, single motives suggest the drawings for the Madonna 
of the Cat. Later Leonardo was to lend to the motive greater 
complication and formal elegance, somewhat at the cost of 
emotional insight. Pictures of intense and natural feeling Leo- 
nardo does not produce after his thirtieth year. Instead we 
have dramatic objectivity in one phase, and in another, ex- 
quisite subtilities, a calculated graciousness sweet to morbidity. 


238 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


What drew Leonardo from Florence to Milan we do not 
surely know. Probably he was called directly by the Duke 
Lodovico Sforza to undertake the colossal equestrian statue 
of his father Francesco. Moreover, Leonardo seems to have 
achieved notoriety at Florence without gaining much confidence 
or achieving much success. After all, he had rather little to 
show for his genius — just his sketch-books and his good in- 
tentions in unfinished masterpieces. He seems, too, never to 
have mastered the practice which ever brought the best com- 
missions, fresco painting. Thus he had every reason to seek 
new fortunes. 

He heralded his coming to Milan with the most truthfully 
boastful of letters in which he arrogated to himself all ability 
as an inventor, civil and military engineer, painter, sculptor, 
and architect; and he entered the presence of Lodovico bear- 
ing a silver lute wrought in the form of a horse’s skull. This 
dramatic entrance was the forecast of arduous duties as an en- 
tertainer. He sang, told anecdotes and fables, arranged pag- 
eants and masques, conducted debates on his art — in short, 
accepted the thousand and one duties and distractions of a 
courtier. 

He painted the portraits of the Duke’s mistresses, and it 
is possible that we have the girlish figure of Cecilia Gallierani 
in the lady with an Ermine® at Cracow. The forms and 
feeling are entirely like Leonardo’s work in the early 
eighties. He agreed to do an altar-piece for the Church of San 
Francesco, and delivered it only after a delay of twenty- 
three years. This most postponed of pictures is the version 
of the Madonna of the Rocks now at London. Meanwhile 
Leonardo’s constant concern was ‘‘the horse,” as he calls it. 
For seven years he worked at a rearing horse with a fallen foe 
trodden beneath. It is shown in many drawings. It was too 
sensational a theme to please him in thelong run. So in 1490, 
spurred by the risk of losing the job, he restudied the horse, 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 239 


using the walking motive, which had come down from classical 
antiquity. Eventually the clay model was set up before the 
Sforza castle, just in time for the invading French archers 
to make a target of it. The rider was never even definitely 
planned. The whole project remained a chagrin to Leonardo 
even after the horse itself had disappeared. One day in Flor- 
ence he civilly accosted Michelangelo who turned on him with 
the taunt — “Thou who did’st model a horse and could’st not 
cast it in bronze.” 

Amidst the distractions of the court, the irksomeness of 
the rashly undertaken Sforza monument, and the increasing 
passion for scientific research, Leonardo managed to carry 
through his single monumental work, the Last Supper, in the 
refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. 

For three years Leonardo worked spasmodically on the 
Last Supper, and it was finished in 1498. ‘The design had been 
most carefully elaborated. He started with the customary 
arrangement of the apostles in pairs, John in Jesus’ bosom — 
a refractory motive, and Judas in sinister isolation on the 
near side of the table. Almost by accident he fell upon the 
effective grouping of the apostles by threes. Then he set 
himself to giving in expression and gesture the maximum emo- 
tion that could be contained within a monumental design. 
He eliminated the old casual accessories and made all the lines 
of perspective converge on the face of Christ. He gave to all 
the figures a classical gravity, though admitting many varieties 
of age and character. 

Thus even in its ruined estate The Last Supper, Figure 154, 
is perhaps the most impressive picture in the world. The 
moment is that when Christ says “One of you shall betray me.” 
The arrangement is in five great balancing waves. From the 
Christ there is an outgoing gesture of resignation and love, 
from the apostles converging, incoming waves of horror, amaze- 
ment, curiosity and indignation. Each undulation is double. 


240 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Extended arms or pointed hands check the motion where it 
is excessive or connect the separate groups. Only Judas 1s 
out of the converging rhythm. He swings back defiantly pon- 
dering his part. Highly agitated in details, the whole is held 


Fig. 154. Leonardo da Vinci. Last supper—S. Maria delle Crazie, Milan. 


within a noble and pathetic decorum. It is the very ideal of 
a Renaissance composition — dense, rich, energetic, varied, 
yet unified by a severe and calculated pattern which subordi- 
nates to its purpose the most diverse components. Raphael 
can only imitate it in the lower part of the Disputa, and monu- 
mental design ever since has gone to school with it. 

It was unhappily painted in tempera, not in oils as older ac- 
counts say,’? on the dry wall, and it soon began to deteriorate. 
What we see today is merely the wraith of it, yet a wraith that 
imposes itself and moves us as few better preserved master- 
pieces do. 

In the year 1500 the French overran Lombardy, and, Leon- 
ardo, after wandering in Northern Italy and a martial episode 
as engineer for conquering Caesar Borgia, returned, in 1503, 
to his native Florence. He is fifty and already in spirit an old 
man. His always limited will power has given out, he broods 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 241 


incessantly over mathematical and physical lore, wastes him- 
self over fantastic inventions. His exhibit is only a cartoon, 
now lost, for a St. Ann. He makes portraits by proxy, but 


Saar 


Fig. 155. Leonardo da Vinci. Sketches for the Battle of Anghiari. 
—Windsor Castle. 


paints, himself, only under peculiar incentives. Such he found 
in the commission for a great battle piece for the Priors’ Palace 
and in the personality of Mona Lisa. 

Early in the year 1504 he began to work on the cartoon for 
the Battle of Anghiari. He chose the incident of a cavalry 
fight for the standard. He composed a whirl of horses and in- 
furiated riders, hacking and slashing about a flag —a literal 
picture of bloodlust at its height. The ability he expended 
on this atrocious theme may be sensed in a dozen preparatory 
sketches, Figure 155. The portion which he actually painted 


242 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


on the wall is represented only by inferior copies. The 
original soon faded from deficient technical methods. The old 
copies tell us that this great piece, while the marvel of its 
day, was sensational and highly 
exhibitionistic. We need not too 
much mourn its loss. The ad- 
miration it evoked was that of 
an age eager for novelty and 
responsive to display. 

While working on the battle- 
piece, Leonardo met the young 
Neapolitan wife of Francesco del 
Giocondo and began her portrait, 
Figure 156. She had lost children 
and was habitually sad. He em- 
ployed musicians to charm the 


inscrutable fascinating smile to 
oo her face. He set her demure and 
Fig. 156. Leonardo. Mona Lisa. watchful before a romantic ex- 
Recs panse of river plain rimmed by 
blue alps. Against this wild charm of nature, he made Mona 
Lisa a symbol for all that is cultured, self-contained, sophis- 
ticated, civilized. Simple people instinctively dislike her, 
and are right. Subtle people adore her, and are also right. 
Such as wish poetic commentary on her mysterious beauty 
may find it for themselves in Walter Pater’s admirable essay. 
They will do well to temper his eloquence with Kenyon Cox’s™ 
just if prosaic observation that this portrait is simply the finest, 
most accurate, and subtle bit of modelling in the world. Its 
mystery is perhaps merely one of amazing vision and impec- 
cable workmanship. The truth may well lie between two in- 
terpretations, each of which is valid in its own field. Had 
there not been some extraordinary spell in the woman 


herself, Leonardo, now well weary of painting, would hardly 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 243 


have studied either her soul or her modelling with such 
tenacity. 

During his brief sojourn in Florence, Leonardo did cartoons 
for two designs of Leda and the 
Swan, his only mythological pic- 
ture. One represents her stand- 
ing, the other crouching. If we 
may trust the inferior imitations, 
in which alone we know these 
subjects, their calculated  sen- 
suousness was almost cloying. 
Their mood is that of his least 
agreeable imitator, Sodoma. 

In May 1506 Florence lent 
Leonardo to Charles d’Amboise, 
the French viceroy at Mulan, 
and there he spent the most of Ett se ane 
the next five years. The Fran- with St. Ann —Louwore. 
ciscans had been biding their 
time, and under legal duress made him finish the Madonna 
which he had promised twenty-three years earlier. Thus the 
second Madonna of the Rocks, at London, was painted some- 
what against the grain. It has more simplicity and breadth 
than the earlier version and shows improvements in the posi- 
tion of the angel. It also lacks the minute and painstaking 
delicacy of its original, reveals a tired hand and mind. Other- 
wise Leonardo achieved in painting only the third version of 
the Madonna and St. Ann, Figure 157, now in the Louvre. 
The interweaving of the figures is compact and masterly, 
the solution of the difficult problems of the two heads con- 
summately clever. It has passages of the utmost loveliness, 
like the foot of the Madonna, but there is some suspicion of 
oversophistication, and Leonardo never summoned the energy 
to finish it. Painting little himself, — for he was busy with 


244. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


canals, architecture, and the never finished equestrian monu- 
ment of Trivulzio, — Leonardo gave his stamp to the entire 
Milanese school. Such pupils as Boltrafho, Cesare da Sesto, 
Andrea Solario, his old partner, Ambrogio de Predis, and his 
intimate, Francesco Melzi, readily grasped his mannerisms, 
and filled Italy with Leonardesque pictures of inferior inspira- 
tion. More robust and independent spirits, like Bernardino 
Luini, adapted his manner intelligently to the needs of mural 
painting. Lombardy under his influence for a moment seemed 
to vie with Florence and Rome. 

In 1513 Leonardo was called to Rome by the new Pope 
Leo X, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son, Giovanni. It was the mo- 
ment for artistic ambition to flame in one who felt himself a 
great painter. Michelangelo had recently unveiled the Sistine 
ceiling, and Raphael had completed the Camera della Segna- 
tura. Leonardo was sixty-one, when a painter should be at 
his best. Yet he plunged himself into scientific experiments, 
perpetrated strange practical jokes on his patrons, produced 
nothing but disorderly notes, and after two wasted years left 
the repute of one rather an amateur magician than an artist. 

Having lived a wanderer, it was appropriate that Leonardo 
should die an exile. Francis I, an enthusiastic patron of 
Italian art, called him to France and settled him honorably 
in the Chateau of Cloux, near Amboise. We hear of him as 
immensely learned and venerable, but palsied, and dependent 
on the affectionate care of his pupil Melzi. He died on the 
morrow of Mayday 1519 at peace with the church, leaving 
money to sixty poor persons who should follow his body with 
candles to the tomb. Doubtless you could have marked in that 
pitiful procession many of those gnarled, toothless and haggard 
faces which Leonardo formerly loved to sketch in the intervais 
of his endless quest of beauty. As we study the marvelous 
drawing of himself in old age, Figure 158, we may surmise that 
he was glad to go. It is hard to see in it the courtier who bore 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 245 


the fantastic silver lute to Lodovico, the artist who charmed 
a smile from the weary and cautious face of Mona Lisa. One 
sees a man immensely old, though at an age generally robust 
and cheery — one who has tried 
to crowd many lives into one and 
has paid the inevitable penalty. 
Broken and intermittent as it 
had been, Leonardo’s painting 
had sufficed to show the way. He 
had substituted mystery of light 
and shade for allurement of frank 
color, study of the subtler and 
finer shades of emotion for obvi- 
ous characterization, had founded 
modern portraiture. He had 
shown how to express power and 
passion with delicacy, had com- 
bined the richest animation and 
variety with monumental sever- Fig. 158. Leonardo da Vinci. 
ity of design. After him the art Elis OW ROLEAK ya luni, 


of painting was never to be the same again. Its standards 


became ampler and more classic. Stolid men like Fra Bar- 
tolommeo immediately accepted his principles of composition 
and so did miraculously alert intelligences like Raphael’s. 
His mere passing contact and tradition inspired that admirable 
language of light and dark that became poetry in Giorgione 
and Correggio. The good and the harm he did is active today 
in thousands of academies and art schools. His is assuredly 
the finest intelligence that ever applied itself to the painter’s 
art, and if he failed in will and in fecundity, he has impressed 
himself upon posterity as no other Italian painter save Titian. 
His art had its limitations, but its capacity for influence, to 
which he added the thoughtful eloquence of his written word, 
seems limitless; and his glory is imperishable. 


246 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Nowhere does the superiority of Florence show more clearly 
than in the attitude of her artists to Leonardo. Where his 
Milanese followers aped his superficial mannerisms, his Floren- 
tine admirers studied and assimilated his construction in light 
and shade and his principles of geometrical composition. Un- 
happily the early years of the sixteenth century were a slack 
time in Florence. Such transitional painters as Piero di Cosimo, 
Granacci, Franciabigio, Il Bacchiacca, and Ridolfo Ghirlan- 
daio were not men to carry forward Leonardo’s discoveries, 
but they and others, at least paid him an intelligent homage 
and sensibly clarified their practice under his influence. 
Greater intelligences like Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del 
Sarto not merely adopted Leonardo’s canons, but even at 
certain points criticized them. Both saw the drawback of 
Leonardo’s passionate concern with chiaroscuro —that it 
flooded the canvas with colorless shadow, tending to reduce 
the palette to black and white. Both men then therefore 
kept their rich shadows colorful. Both worked for a more com- 
pact and intricate composition as well as for graceful, ab- 
stract poses. In these latter endeavors they simplified and 
sharpened principles which Leonardo himself only rarely carried 
to their logical extreme. 

Leonardo retained certain primitive qualities. He seldom 
reduced his compositions to dense arrangements of the figures, 
loving to allow elbow room and delighting to open up land- 
scape backgrounds. And while in the “Treatise on Painting” 
he advocated elaborately balanced and counterpoised poses, 
in practice he usually sought an excuse for them in action. A 
consummate stylist, he achieved style on a basis of function. 
The pose, in his own words, must express “‘the emotions of 
the soul.” Right here his ablest followers took issue with him. 
Posture with them no longer expressed specific or individual 
emotion, but abstract beauties of grace, dignity or grandeur. 
The figures no longer do or feel anything, they are arranged 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 247 


as the general composition and mood of the picture require. 
Such gradual advance towards pure style heralds the advent 
of the High Renaissance. 

Of the somewhat stolid and occasionally sentimental sub- 
limity of Fra Bartolommeo” 
nothing much need be said except 
that it was a formative influence 
on young Raphael. The Domin- 
ican monk is an impressive and 
amiable figure personally. Work- 
ing solely for the glory of God 
and the profit of the Convent 
of San Marco, perturbed by the 
tragic fate of his cloister mate, 
Savonarola, he strove incessantly 
for a fuller color and a greater 
dignity. In his numerous Holy 
Families he is stately in a con- 
ventional way, nowhere more so 


than in the unfinished design for 
a Madonna with St. Ann, in the Fig. 159. Fra Bartolommeo. God 

. me ; ‘ appearing to two Saints. — Lucca. 
Uffizi. Occasionally, in such pic- 
tures as the Deposition of the Uffizi, and the Madonna of 
Pity at Lucca he achieves poignant, one is tempted to say 
operatic effects, forecasting the mood of the Baroque. Lucca 
also affords in the great picture God Adored by Two Saints, 
Figure 159, a fine example of this painter’s simple and massive 
compositions. In the fresco of The Last Judgment, which, 
being ruined, is better represented by Copies, Figure 160, we 
find an elaboration, in Leonardo’s sense, of the simple sym- 
metries of Perugino. It is the precedent for Raphael’s mon- 
umental frescoes at Rome. His short career, from about 1495 
to 1517, fell on evil times for Florence. In happier days he 
might have harmonized more perfectly the stylist and the 


248 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


lyrical dramatist that, as it was, never quite came to terms in 


his grave and noble personality. Yet to have mediated be- 
tween Leonardo and Raphael would seem glory enough for 


| 

Fig. 160. Fra Bartolommeo. 
Copy of Lost Fresco of Last 
Judgment. — S. Marco. 


any painter, and it was also no 
slight service to borrow for Flor- 
entine painting, rapidly becom- 
ing starved of color, something 
of the colorful richness of Gio- 
vanni Bellini and Giorgione. 
“The Perfect Painter’ was 
what the _ Florentines called 
Andrea del Sarto, and he mer- 
ited the title. He produced no 
masterpiece of the first order, 
but his work is singularly uni- 


form on a high level. Its chief qualities are dignity and grace 
with a great richness of color. The deep shadows are warm 


and full of dusky light, the sty- 
listic poses of the figures always 
easy, and the weaving of the 
complicated groupings ever taste- 
ful and harmonious. To the re- 
fractory art of fresco painting 
Andrea brought a richness, depth 
and variety of color that others 
hardly attained in oil painting. 
Only Luini in the north came 
near him in this regard. In short 
he is a consummate technician, 
carrying his art as far as skill 
and taste unillumined by sheer 
genius will reach. 


Little of his excellence can be laid to his early training. 
Before 1500 he was working with Piero di Cosimo, and Andrea’s: 


Fig. 161. Andrea del Sarto. 


Birth. — Annunziata. 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 249 


youthful frescoes of the miracles of S. Filippo Benizzi, in the 
fore-court of the Annunziata, show the loose and animated 
arrangements and the exaggeration of picturesque landscape 
features characteristic of his master. But Andrea learned 


Fig. 162. Andrea del Sarto. Madonna of the Sack. — Annunziata. 


rather of the time-spirit than of any other master. By 1514 
his art is complete and one may see its flowering in the fres- 
coes of the Birth of the Virgin, Figure 161, and the Madonna of 
the Sack, Figure 162, respectively in the fore-court and in the 
cloister of the Annunziata. It is a sumptuous and grave kind 
of design redeemed from heaviness by its exquisite balance of 
color masses, and from conventionality by the hint of portraiture 
in the artfully disposed figures. 

Scores of times Andrea repeats these perfections in the 
great altar-backs required for the new Renaissance chapels. 
The Four Saints in the Pitti, the Madonna of the Harpies in 
the Uffizi, Figure 162a, the Enthroned Madonna at Berlin may 
serve among many to illustrate his accomplishment in this new 
vein. Somewhat reminiscent of the heavier monumentality 
of Fra Bartolommeo, these great pictures add a personal and 


250 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


disquieting note from the presence of the moody, handsome 
wife, Lucrezia whose caprices and infidelities are the tragic 
element in an otherwise even life. 


Fig. 162a. Andrea del Sarto. Madonna of the Harpies. — Uffizi. 


Andrea in his later years won new glories but added no new 
note to his art. The monochrome frescoes in the Cloister of 
the Scalzo representing the Life of St. John Baptist merely 
show the old gravity somewhat exaggerated. The series which 
extended over many years (1515-1526) is uneven, and many 
of these perhaps overestimated compositions are plainly 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 251 


of student execution. Without his color, Andrea seems some- 
what coldly academic. It was precisely this quality of stylistic 
grandeur, however, that appealed paradoxically to the roman- 
tic monarch, Francis I. He called Andrea to France in 1518 
and kept him there in honor for a year. Had Andrea possessed 
any of the capacities of a teacher and theorist, he might have 
inaugurated the Renaissance in France. As it was he remained 
merely a harbinger of such inferior but more influential spirits 
as Il Rosso and Primaticcio who a few years later were to 
found the School of Fontainebleau. 

Often the portfolios of a great technician are more thrill- 
ing than his major works. ‘This is the case with Andrea del 
Sarto. His numerous sketches in red chalk, have an athletic 
charm which his painting lacks. Others have drawn differently 
in this medium, but no one has drawn better. 

When Andrea died in 1531, “full of glory and domestic 


3) 


trials,” as Vasari recounts, the normal development of Floren- 
tine painting ended, and Florence had already seen her artistic 
star dimmed by the rising splendors of Venice and Rome. 
Artistically she became a city of wit and ingenuity, chroni- 
cling and criticizing art rather than producing it. Moreover the 
obsession of Michelangelo’s sublimity worked havoc with his 
dilettante imitators. Some of these have the grace of lucidity, 
like Agnolo Bronzino, who (1502-1572)'4 practiced a reactionary 
sort.of portraiture based on the old tradition of tempera paint- 
ing. In sheer beauty of surface, enamel one is tempted to call it, 
he is little inferior to his great German contemporary, Hans 
Holbein, and his sense of character is only less keen because less 
individual. In the haughty patricians surrounding the person 
of Cosimo, the first grandduke, he found congenial sitters, 
Figure 163. In the narrow field of portraiture he is nearly in 
the first rank, while in his rare mythologies and religious 
pictures his limitations appear painfully. He was a vicious 
person, a cold zsthete, with few of the generous virtues that 


252 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


nourish the soul. Yet in his flinty way he was quite perfect, 
and as one of the first professionally unmoral artists he cannot 
be neglected by the psychological critic. 

A more appealing figure is his 
master, Jacopo Carrucci, called 
from his birthplace I] Pontormo.¥ 
His was a tender and deeply 
religious spirit with the poet’s 
capacity for elation and melan- 
choly. In his altar-pieces, such 
as the Deposition, Figure 164, at 
S. Felicita he seeks and achieves 
a positive pathos. Influenced by 
Michelangelo’s sublimity, he con- 
verts it to more specific and 
psychological ends. Often he is 
restless and over-emphatic as in 
the frescoes of the Passion in the 


cloister of the Florentine Certosa, 
Fic. 164. Pontormo. The or in the strangely complicated 
Pep Os One oe a ‘and contorted little picture of 
the Martyrdom of St. Mauritius and his Legionaries, in the 
Uffizi. In such work he moves towards the absolute expres- 
sionism of an El Greco, preluding also the more conventional 
emotionalism of the Baroque. As a portraitist he had no 
equal at Florence except his pupil Bronzino. Often the sen- 
sitiveness and moodiness of his characterizations recall his 
Venetic contemporary, Lorenzo Lotto. Even when he is robust 
he is sensitively psychological, as in the superb portrait of a 
Halberdier, Figure 165. Above all he was a powerful and 
subtle draughtsman whether with pen or chalk. His line writhes 
in a fashion at times sinister, at times singularly blithe, and 
his figure sketches have something of the imaginative thrill 
of the figure studies of Blake. For the grandducal palace of 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 253 


Poggio a Cajano, Figure 166, he did in a huge lunette pierced 
by a great round window a most original decoration for the 
odd triangles at the base. The unconventional fields are 
filled each by a rather small figure energetically posed and 


Fig. 163. Bronzino. Eleonora of 
Toledo and her son. — Uffizi. 


Fig. 165. Pontormo. The Halber- 
dier.— C. C. Stillman, N.Y. 


surrounded by greenery. ‘The thing is at once monumental and 
pastoral and its freedom and tonality almost as modern as a 
Besnard. I would willingly dwell longer on so sympathetic an 
artist, but can only refer the interested reader to Dr. F. M. 
Clapp’s two authoritative volumes. 

For a century and more after Pontormo’s death in 1556 
there are still occasional artists of talent at Florence, but there 
is no longer a Florentine school. The masterpieces of Michel- 
angelo were at Rome, those of Raphael widely scattered. 
Conscious of her decline, Florence begins to import artists — 
the Flemish portraitist, Sustermans; the Venetian decorator, 
Luca Giordano. One of her own abler painters, Francesco 
Salviati, attaches himself to the Venetian manner. Being an 
academic city, Florence eschews the rugged naturalism of 


254 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Caravaggio, but has no longer vitality enough to find a sub- 
stitute of her own. In the late sixteenth century her fresco 
painting sinks to the pompous emptiness represented by Giorgio 
Vasari, or by the hardly better mythologies of the brothers 


Fig. 166. Pontormo. Frescoed Lunette. — Poggio a Cajano. 


Federigo and Taddeo Zuccaro. In the seventeenth century 
she still can produce an idyllist of great romantic and sensuous 
charm in a Francesco Furini and a genial illustrator in a Gio- 
vanni di San Giovanni. But such names only suggest the 
incoherence of the times. Florence is no longer a main current 
but an eddy, and what small flood-tide still runs courses in the 
more resolute academism of Bologna, which is to be capable 
of inspiring a Poussin; and in the raw naturalism of Naples, 
which is about to give lessons to a Velasquez. 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 255 


ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER V 


POETRY AND PAINTING IN THE RENAISSANCE 


Reversing the maxim wut pictura poesis, the Renaissance believed 
that painting should be poetical. Indeed the term poesia is commonly 
applied to all painting of a mythological or idyllic sort. Angelo Polizi- 
ano’s unfinished but very popular poem on the joust of 1468 is lavish 
in descriptions, of which the painters made use. Botticelli surely got 
more than a hint for the Birth of Venus from stanzas xcix-ci of La 
Giostra, though the mood of the picture is wholly Sandro’s own and 
unlike the pagan joyousness of Poliziano. 


| “One saw 
Born in the sea, free and joyous in her acts, 
A damsel with divine visage 
Driven ashore by the ardent zephyrs 
Balancing on a shell; and it seemed the heavens rejoiced thereat.” - 


“True the foam and true the sea you would have said 
True the shell, and the blowing of the winds true. 
You would have seen the gleam of the Goddess’ eye 
And the heavens laugh about her, and the elements. 
And the Hours in white garments on the strand, 
And the winds toss their spreading soft locks.” 


Sr hae tela a Sar ee hee, a ie 


“You could swear that you could see the goddess coming from the waves 
Wringing out her hair with her right hand 
And with the left covering the sweet mount of desire, 
And the sand, once trodden by her feet, 
Clothing itself with grass and flowers. 
Then with joyous and expectant glance 
You would have seen her clasped by the three nymphs 
And wrapped in a starry robe.” 


Botticelli’s charming and even slyly humorous picture of Venus 
with sleeping Mars, at London, follows afar and discreetly La Giostra, I. 


otherwise considerably subtilized it. Venus is 


256 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


‘‘Seated in bed outside the covers 
Just released from the arms of Mars 
Who, lies backward on her lap 


‘“‘ Above them and around the tiny loves 
Played naked, flying now here now there 


“One fills the quiver with fresh flowers 
Then comes and empties it on the bed.” 


Poliziano also supplied to Raphael the theme of the Galatea, in the 
Faruesina, Giostru I, cxviii (Fig. 1924) 


“Two shapely dolphins draw a car; 
On it is Galatea who holds the reins, 
And they swimming breathe with equal breath. 
Around circle the more amorous throng. 
One spits out the salt wave, the others circle round; 
One seems to play at love and dallies. 
The fair nymph with her trusted sisters 
Laughs charmingly at their hoarse singing.” 


Titian, too, may have had in mind the Giostra, I. cxi, when he com- 
posed his Bacchus and Ariadne. (Fig. 260) 


‘“‘Comes upon a car covered with ivy and rushes 
Drawn by two tigers — Bacchus 

And with him it seems that fauns and mznads 

Tread the deep sand and shout with raised voices. 

One we see staggering; others seem to stumble, 

One clashes the cymbal; others seem to laugh. 

One drinks from a horn, one from his hand. 

One has grabbed a nymph, and one turns handsprings.”’ 


LEONARDO AND THE ACADEMIC IDEA OF PAINTING 


The extraordinary mixture of liberality and dogmatism, of natural- 
ism and taste in Leonardo is best illustrated from his own Tratiato 
della Pitlura. I quote from the standard edition of H. Ludwig, Vienna, 
1882, using his paragraph numbers; 


BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 257 


MODELLING IN CH_AR SCURO AS THE PAINTER’S First OBJECT 


{ 412. ~The first object of the painter is to make a flat plane appear 
as a body in relief and projecting from that plane, and he who in such 
art excels the others, deserves the greater praise, and such research, or 
rather crown of such science, is born from light and shade, or I mean 
chiaroscuro. Then he who flees from shadows, flees also from the glory 
of our art among noble spirits and gains it with the ignorant herd, which 
desires nothing in painting but beauty of colors, forgetting entirely the 
beauty and wonder of showing a flat thing as if it were in relief.” 


ON JUDGING A PAINTER’S WoRK 


{ 483. “ The first thing is that you consider the figures, if they have 
the relief which the place and light demand... 

“The second is that the scattering, or rather distribution of the 
figures be made according to the way in which you wish the story to 
be. 

“The third is that the figures be alert and intent on their particular 
purpose.” 

| ON THE MOVEMENTS THAT MARK THE EMOTIONS 

{| 122. ‘“The most important thing which can be found in the theory 
of painting are the movements appropriate to the mental state of each 
being,— as desire, scorn, wrath, pity and the like.” 


THE STEPS IN A PAINTER’S EDUCATION 


{/ 82. ‘Draw first designs of a good master made in the fashion of 
nature and not mannered; then from a relief, in the presence of a draw- 
ing made from that relief; then from a good natural object.” 


JUDGMENT VERSUS DEXTERITY 


{ 62. “That painter who does not doubt learns little. When the 
work surpasses the judgment of the worker, that worker acquires little, 
and when the judgment surpasses the work, that work never ceases to 
grow better, unless avarice prevents it.” 


On Use oF MEmory IN THE NIGHT WATCHES 


{ 67. “Also I have proved it to be of no little use to me, when you 
find yourself in bed in the dark, to repeat in the imagination the things 
studied earlier, or other things of notable sort comprised in subtle 
thought, and this is truly a laudable act and useful in fixing things in 
memory.” 


258 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


On SELECTIVE IMITATION 


{ 58a. ‘The painter should be solitary and think over what he sees 
and discuss with himself, selecting the most excellent parts of the 
species of whatever he sees, acting after the fashion of a mirror which 
transmutes into as many colors as there are things what is set before 
it. And so doing he will seem to be himself a second nature.” 

{] 98. ‘‘Winter evenings should be used by young painters in the 
study of things prepared in summer, that is bring together all the 
nudes which you have made in the summer, and make a choice of the 
better limbs and bodies and practice from them and fix them in 
mind.” 

On HicH STANDARDS 


{ 59. “If you painter will seek to please the first painters, you will 
make your pictures well, because they alone can guide you truthfully, 
but if you wish to please those who are not masters, your pictures will 
have few foreshortenings and little relief or alert movement, and there- 
by you will fail in that part in which painting is held to be an excellent 
art, that is in giving an effect of relief where there is nothing in relief.” 


On AVOIDING HARSH SHADOWS AND SUNLIGHT EFFECTS 


{| 87. ‘The light cut off from the shade too clearly is greatly blamed 
by painters. Hence to avoid such a fault, if you paint bodies in the 
open country, you will not make the figures as lighted by the sun, but 
imagine some sort of mist or transparent clouds to be interposed be- 
tween the object and the sun, whence, since the figure is not empha- 
sized by the sunlight, the demarcations of light and shade will not 
be emphasized.” 

On THE Most PLEASING LIGHT 


{1 138. “If you have a court yard that can be covered as you wish 
with a linen awning, that will be a good light; or when you wish to draw 
anyone, draw him in bad weather, towards nightfall, and make the sitter 
stand with his back to one of the walls of this court. In the streets 
set your mind towards nightfall on the faces of the men and women, 
in bad weather, how much grace and sweetness appears in them.” 


ON COUNTERPOISE OF THE FIGURE 


{| 88. ‘Do not have the head turned the way the breast is, nor the 
arm the way the leg is; and if the head is turned over the right shoulder 
make the parts lower on the left than on the right” [and vice versa ]. 


BOTTICELLI AND LEORNARDO DA VINCI 259 


At first blush this stylistic counsel flatly contradicts Leonardo’s 
principle that poses and emotions should express state of mind, but 
as a matter of fact many expressive movements obey this law of counter- 
poise or active equilibrium. Leonardo himself generally finds motives 
for such poses. Such successors as Raphael and Andrea del Sarto 
_ habitually used such poses without other excuse than that of their own 
inherent gracefulness. 


On FREEDOM IN MAKING A COMPOSITION 


{| 189. ‘Have you never considered the poets composing their verses? 
They take no trouble to make fine letters, nor do they mind cancelling 
some of the verses and making them better. Do you, then, painter, 
make the limbs of your figures roughly and attend first to the move- 
ments appropriate to the mental state of the beings composing your 
story, rather than to the beauty and rightness of their members, be- 
cause you must understand that if such a composition in the rough 
will meet the needs of the invention, it will please all the more after it 
has been adorned with the perfection appropriate to all its parts. I 
have seen in the clouds and spots on the wall what has aroused me 
to fine inventions of various things, since these spots though entirely 
without perfection in any part, did not lack perfection in their move- 
ments and other actions.” 


PAINTING THE GRANDCHILD OF NATURE 


§ 12. “If you shall despise painting, which is the only imitator of 
all the apparent works of nature, assuredly you will despise also that 
careful investigation which with philosophical and careful speculation 
considers all the qualities of forms: the sea, place, plants, animals, 
herbage, flowers, which are enveloped in light and shade. And truly 
this speculation is science and the legitimate child of Nature, since 
painting is born of this nature. But, to speak more correctly, we will 
say grandchild of nature, since all apparent things are born of Nature, 
of which things painting is born. Hence rightly we shall call it the 
grandchild of this nature and the kinsman of God.” 


THAT THE PAINTER SHOULD BE SOLITARY 


{ 50. “The painter, or rather designer, should be solitary, and 
especially when he is intent on speculations and considerations which 
continually appearing before the eyes give matter to be well kept in 
memory. And if you are alone, you will be entirely yours. And 


260 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


if you shall be accompanied by a single companion you _ will 
be half yours, and so much the less as the indiscretion of your com- 
panionship shall be the greater . . . And if you would say ‘I will do 
in my fashion, I will hold myself apart’... one cannot serve two 
masters. You will fullfil badly the duty of a companion, and worse 
the aim of reasoning on the art . . . And if you say ‘I will withdraw 
myself entirely,’. . . I tell you you will be held a madman, but, lo, 
thus doing you will at least be alone.” 

Here Leonardo takes sharpest issue with the easy-going sociable 
methods which for generations had held in the painter’s botiega, and 
shows himself an individualist of modern type. 


RUBENS’ PRAISE OF LEONARDO 


Peter Paul Rubens, who had copied Leonardo’s battle-piece, has left 
the following perceptive tribute to the genius of his predecessor: 

‘“‘Nothing escaped him that related to the expression of his subject: 
and by the heat of his fancy, as well as by the solidity of his judgment, 
he raised divine things by human, and understood how to give men 
those different degrees, that elevate them to the character of heroes. 

“The best of the examples which he has left us is our Lord’s Supper, 
which he painted at Milan, wherein he has represented the apostles in 
places that suit with them, and our Saviour in the most honourable, 
the midst of all, having nobody near enough to press or incommode him. 
His attitude is grand, his arms are in a loose and free posture, to show 
the greater grandeur, while the apostles appear agitated one side to the 
other by the vehemence of their inquietude, and in which there is, 
however, no meanness, nor any indecent action to be seen. In short 
by his profound speculations he arrived to such a degree of perfection, 
that it seems to me impossible to speak so well of him as he deserves, 
and much more to imitate him.” 

The Art of Painting . . . Translated from the French of Monsieur 
De Piles, London about 1725. p. 107 f. 


THE GOLDEN AGE 


Fig. 167. Raphael. Count Baldassare Castiglione, author of 
“the Courtier.” — Louvre. 


262 


CHAPTER VI 


THE GOLDEN AGE 


RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO 


* On pride and humility in Art— The new Grand Style defined — Umbrian 
humility in the Early Painters — Gentile da Fabriano — The Fifteenth 
Century — Luca Signorelli — Perugino — Raphael; Early development — 
Roman triumph — Michelangelesque aberrations — Michelangelo. 


Whether the greatest art is grounded in pride or in humil- 
ity has divided the critics. To most it will seem evident that 
the artist’s assertion of his own powers is an act of pride — 
a pride of person which is often reinforced by that of nation 
and race. As fine a critic as John Ruskin, on the contrary, 
has insisted that the greatest art springs from humility — 
reverence for God, admiration of His works in nature, homage 
also to one’s earthly master in art and withal to the great tra- 
dition of one’s craft. The difference is world-wide. Accord- 
ing to one interpretation or the other, the work of art becomes 
an act of display or of worship. Such opposites in the realm 
of analysis often meet comfortably enough in the realm of 
practice. A haughty individualist like Leonardo da Vinci 
insists that his investigations of appearance and reality lead 
to that knowledge of God without which love is impossible. 
And the Golden Age of painting itself, though mostly based 
on corporate and individual pride, has also its infusion of 
humility. If Michelangelo represents the flowering of three 
generations of research, of that pride of intellect which ever 
ruled Florence, so equally does Raphael represent many gen- 


erations of humility and teachableness in his native Umbria. 
263 


264 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


For about ten years pride and humility worked side by side, 
and that was the Golden Age. Pride prevailed over humility, 
and the classical style of Central Italy sunk to a pretentious 
exhibitionism. 

Our theme is that brief moment of accomplishment which 
witnessed the rise of Rome as centre of art, and the greatest 
painting of Raphael and Michelangelo. We need not hesi- 
tate to apply to it the oldfashioned term, the Golden Age. 
But we shall not use it with quite the oldfashioned unction, 
knowing as we do the heavy sacrifice involved in attaining - 
the so-called Grand Style, and the still heavier penalty it im- 
posed upon the art that succeeded it. 

The Florentines believed that painting had reached its 
height in the years 1504 and 1505, when Leonardo da Vinci 
and Michelangelo were designing the great competitive battle- 
pieces for the Priors’ Palace at Florence, and Raphael was 
painting his loveliest Madonnas. Modern critics might rather 
be inclined to date the grand climacteric from a pathetic in- 
cident of a few years later. In 1508, when Pope Julius II 
wished to decorate the new anterooms of the Vatican, the 
famous stanze he called the best of the older painters — 
Sodoma, Perugino, Signorelli, among others. No sooner had 
they bégun to decorate the vaults than their work seemed 
inadequate. They were turned off incontinently and the young 
man Raphael called down from Florence to take their place. 
The incident shows how suddenly the new beauty dawned 
upon the world of art patronage. Vividly conscious of its 
advent, the Italians were less conscious of the equally sudden 
waning of the great style. With the wisdom of hindsight 
we can now see that the whole development was a marvel- 
ous spurt, lasting a bare dozen years, from the battle cartoons 
of 1505 to Raphael’s tapestry cartoons of 1516. Raphael 
and Michelangelo, who created the lasting glory of the Renais- 
sance, also dug its grave. Before considering the creative 


THE GOLDEN AGE 265 


and destructive energies of these two giants, we may profit- 
ably note the characteristics of what whether for praise or 
mockery has ever since been called the Grand Style. And 
here I have little to do beyond condensing Professor Wofflin’s 
excellent book. 

In the Grand Style the accent was on maturity, decorum, 
and measured power. Vivacious and picturesque incidents 
are eschewed. The new art demands simplicity and centrality. 
The human figure dominates the compositions. The frame is 
filled densely with a complicated group. The figures them- 
selves are ample and mature. The Madonna is no longer a 
girl, but a gracious woman of thirty years. The Christ Child 
is no longer an infant, but a well-grown lad, whose supple 
curves harmonize with those of grown folks. As to pose, the 
figures no longer are casually arranged or in some posture re- 
quired by a specific action. ‘They are cast in conventional 
poses which bring out the active beauty of the body. Heads 
swing across shoulders, the upper body turns against the 
thrust of the lower, the arms counter the action of the legs. 
Such counterpoise is always active, implying motion. Straight 
lines give way to weavings of S curves—so many springs 
‘whose tension is kept equal. Violent motion or torsion of the 
body is frequent, but one motion or torsion must be immedi- 
ately taken up and balanced by some equivalent. Following 
the general principle of centrality, colors are fewer and more 
studied. In portraiture, for example, we no longer have land- 
scape or elaborate interiors, but plain dark backgrounds. At 
all points we have left spontaneity and happy accident behind 
and have entered a world of exquisite calculation. Society 
had moved with art towards ideals of simplicity and decorum. 
You no longer find the braided, beribboned and jewelled coif- 
fures of Botticelli’s women, but serene brows with the hair 
drawn back evenly from its part and disposed as a mass in a 
net. Young gallants wear their abundant locks much the same 


266 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


way and sport seignorial spade beards. Old men are even 
more magnificently provided with beards of monumental 
scale. Such men are clothed no longer in particolored raiment, 
but in richly sober black. The ideal is dignity, composure, 
and magnanimity. You may trace it through all its intricacies 
of casuistry in what is still one of the best pictures of what a 
gentleman and lady should be, the Cortegiano of Baldassare 
Castiglione. It was finished in 1516 while his friend Raphael 
was designing the tapestry cartoons. And you may read much 
of this high teaching in Count Castiglione’s own sensitive and 
comprehending face, Figure 167, as Raphael then painted it. 
It breathes that fine interplay of pride and humility which 
was the mainspring of the Renaissance, and it brings us back 
to the double origin of the Grand Style in the pride of Florence 
and the humility of Umbria. 

Umbria in the narrow sense includes only the lovely stretches 
of the upper Tiber, and the rolling banks of Lakes Trasimene 
and Bolsena. But all the way over the mountains to the 
Adriatic the civilization was of a similar type, and so the art. 
Thus we may reckon the Adriatic Marches from Ancona to 
Ravenna as Umbrian from the point of view of the historian 
of painting. ‘There were no great cities and little commerce. : 
It is a region of small hill-top communes within the walls of 
which the peasants huddled for protection at night, going 
down to the fields in the day. It was a country of hot passions 
and violent feuds, and equally of religious enthusiasm and 
mystical piety. Great heresies had swept the land and so had 
the joyous and practical Christianity of St. Francis, greatest of 
Umbria’s sons. We have much of the volatility that we noted 
in Siena, without, however, a capital city to centralize it, and 
we also have what Siena lacked — an abiding and beautiful 
humility. Umbria knew her provincial estate and accepted its 
limitations. 

Nowhere is this more plainly shown than in her art. For 


THE GOLDEN AGE 267 


two centuries she was in the position of inducing foreign 
artists to come in, ever in an attitude of admiration and do- 
cility. Thus Giunta of Pisa, Cimabue and his Roman con- 
temporaries; Giotto and his Florentine pupils; Simone Martini 
and other Sienese painters decorated the chief monument of 
Umbria, the Basilica of St. Francis at Assisi. Their work 
extended over a century to say 1330. Later still Sienese artists 
were employed at Perugia, among others, T’addeo Bartoli, and 
the region promised to become an artistic dependency of 
Siena. But with the dawning of the Renaissance and the 
extension of Florentine power beyond Arezzo, Florentine ar- 
tists are preferred. We find Domenico Veneziano at Perugia, 
in 1438, in the pay of the ruling Baglioni. A little earlier Fra 
Angelico had painted for several years at Cortona. In the 
early fifties Benozzo Gozzoli painted his Franciscan frescoes at 
Montefalco, and was otherwise active in the Tiber valley. In 
1468 Fra Filippo Lippi was called to Spoleto. Soon after, 
Umbria learned to depend on her own artists. In the Adriatic 
Marches there had been a limited penetration of Giotto’s 
style, chiefly by way of Padua and Rimini. By the end of the 
century the Lorenzettian manner dominated. It was suc- 
ceeded by the influence of the Venetian Renaissance as exem- 
plified by such rather backward artists as the Vivarini and Carlo 
Crivelli. Still later the diffused influence of Giovanni Bellini 
meets harmoniously that of Perugino. 

Thus in humility and teachableness Umbria very slowly, 
and through most various stages of discipleship, worked out 
her own originality. And when it came one felt deeply in it 
the teaching of her spacious intervales and blue moun- 
tains. 

It is so with the first notable painter that Umbria produced, 
Gentile da Fabriano. He felt landscape as no artist before 
him. Born about 1360, he was trained by his fellow townsman, 
Alegretto Nuzi. Alegretto had made sound studies at Florence 


268 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


and had also observed with admiration the pictures of the 
Lorenzetti. His own altar-pieces have the Sienese splendor 
with a touch of sweetness that is wholly Umbrian. His pupil 
Gentile prefers more ornate and florid compositions such as we 


Fic. 168. Gentile da Fabriano. Adoration of the Magi.— Uffizi. 


see in his early Coronation of the Virgin at Milan. Soon 
Gentile gave himself to the panoramic narrative style, out- 
doing the Lorenzetti in elaboration, vivacity, and gracefulness. 
Superficially he resembles such Florentine contemporaries as 
Lorenzo Monaco and Masolino, but his mood is broader and 
more genial, and his decorative accent more splendid. Before 
1410 he was called to Venice to paint in the new Ducal Palace. 
His animated historical frescoes were soon destroyed by fire, 
but his sojourn was long enough to impress his manner, through 
his pupil Jacopo, Bellini, and numerous imitators, on the Vene- 
tian narrative school. 


THE GOLDEN AGE 269 


Passing to Florence, he left there the fullest expression of 
his gracious talent in the resplendent Adoration of the Kings, 
Figure 168, now in the Ufhzi, which was painted for Palla 
Strozzi’s chapel in the Trinita. It was signed in May 1423, 


Fic. 169. Gentile da Fabriano. The Nativity. Predella piece from 
Adoration of Magi. — Uffizi. 


and perhaps because it was the season of flowers, Gentile 
painted in the rich pilasters growing sprays of morning glory, 
iris, anemone, and cornflower. Within its fantastic Gothic 
frame we witness a pageant such as Italy often saw on holy 
days — the procession of the Wise men moving through her 
streets. Around the Mother and her Child devotion reigns, 
but soon the scene passes off into the tumult of waiting men- 
at-arms, of chafing steeds, and snarling animals of the chase. 
The color is a radiance of scarlet, crimson, azure and gold, 
after the Gothic fashion. But the picture is more than Gothic 
in the tender and almost atmospheric shading of the rolling 
hills in the background. Skilfully blending Sienese idealism 
with narrative breadth and vivacity, the picture is the last 
and most magnificent memorial to a chivalry now merely an 
afterglow, but dying with all the iridescence of the sunset hour. 

As is usually the case, the modern contribution of the pic- 
ture is modestly made in the predella panels. The Nativity, 
Figure 169, with the light radiating tenderly from the Christ 


270 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Child and golden stars glimmering above the hill-top pastures 
is perhaps the first nocturne in art, and still one of the 
loveliest. The Flight into Egypt, shows a joyous sunrise 
creeping over the glad hills. The means are conventional, 
the highlights are touched in 
with gold, but the mood and 
effect are there. Young Masac- 
cio surely considered these little 
panels before he undertook his 
more naturalistic adventure in 
structural light and shade. 

Soon Pope Martin V, returning 
from exile at Avignon and plan- 
ning to restore the splendors of . 
Christian Rome, called Gentile 
and set him to decorating the 
nave of St. John Lateran. Again 
fire has deprived us of the monu- 
mental works which constituted 
Gentile’s contemporary fame. We 
know that they won the praise of 
the greatest Flemish painter who 

TE visited Renaissance Italy, Rogier 
a aes) Sines de la Pasture of Tournai. And 
land. two generations later crabbed 
Michelangelo declared almost sentimentally that Gentile was 
gentle both by name and by nature. - For us it is important to 
note that Gentile forecast precisely the future triumphs of 
Raphael, carrying the glory of Umbrian painting widely 
through Italy before asserting it at Rome. 

Of course such work as Gentile’s was highly exceptional in 
the Umbrian Marches. The average state of things is repre- 
sented by the shy and humble Madonnas which Frances- 
cuccio Ghisi repeated indefinitely. This type of Madonna of 


THE GOLDEN AGE 271 


Humility is nowhere more delightfully represented than in the 
lovely panel at the Cleveland Museum, Figure 170, for which 
I have elsewhere suggested the attribution of Andrea da 
Bologna.? She is most unlike the majestic Madonnas of Flor- 
ence and Siena. To assure us that this gentle Mother is after 
all Queen of Heaven and the Second Eve come for our salva- 
tion, the artist has given her a resplendent aureole with tiny 
miniatures of her champions, the apostles, and has stretched 
at her feet that First Eve in whom we all sinned. The picture 
will have been painted before 1380, and, with its Byzantine 
reminiscences, it well exemplifies the medizvalism that held 
its own in the Adriatic Marches long after Tuscany had set 
her face towards the Renaissance. 

It would add little to our survey of Umbria to dwell on 
Ottaviano Nelli at Urbino, a gently vivacious story teller; 
nor yet on those early painters at Camerino and San Severino 
who tinged the softer native style with the splendid severity 
of the early Venetian manner. I pass their works with regret, 
for they are often lovely in their frank dependence on greater 
spirits. In a general survey the middle years of the fifteenth 
century in Umbria show rather little to attract us until the 
rise of Pietro Perugino. He emerges in an artistic world domi- 
nated in the Tiber Valley by the Florentine, Gozzoli, and be- 
yond the mountains by Carlo Crivelli and the Vivarini. Such 
predecessor of Perugino as Benedetto Bonfigli of Perugia need 
not detain us. He had learned a little, a very little, from the 
Florentine, Domenico Veneziano, paints Madonnas with a 
modest ideality; and narratives, the life of St. Ercolano in 
the Communal Palace of Perugia, with abundant and muddled 
detail, after the fashion of Gozzoli and Domenico di Bartolo. 
His bottega was a factory of those quaint and often terrible 
religious banners, Figure 171, which the devout Umbrians 
carried processionaly to avert the recurrent plague. We need 
not dwell upon Perugino’s alleged master, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, 


272 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


whose ugly and emphatic draughtsmanship derives from Ver- 
rocchio and the Pollaiuoli. We may best appreciate Perugino’s 
extraordinary originality by considering contemporaries who 


Fic. 171. Bonfigli Plague Ban- Fic. 172. Lorenzo di San Seve- 
ner. The Virgin protecting rino. Madonna and Saints. 
her ‘Devotees from plague — Cleveland, O. 


Shafts hurled by Christ. — 

Chiesa del Gonfalone, Perugia. 
came up with equal advantages. Lorenzo di San Severino ex- 
emplifies the usual Umbrian blend of Gozzoli and Venetian 
influences. And in such a picture as the Enthroned Madonna, 
Figure 172, in the Holden Collection, at Cleveland, he attains 
an ideality of feeling and a beauty of workmanship of the most 
refreshing sort. This picture must have been painted about 
1490. It may represent the high mark reached in the Marches 
towards the end of the century — may thus dispense us from con- 
sidering such inherently charming painters as Girolamo da 
Camerino and his fellow townsman Giovanni Boccatis. 

A very similar training produces more ambitious but hardly 


THE GOLDEN AGE 273 


more pleasing results in Niccolo Liberatore of Foligno, (1430 to 
1502). Early influenced by Gozzoli, he later aped the intensity 
of the Venetian, Carlo Crivelli. Niccol6 thus chafes within 
the modest bounds proper to art in Umbria. He essays tragedy 
and too often achieves burlesque. 
He paints, like most of the Um- 
brians, processional banners, and 
also the most complicated altar- 
pieces, in which cusps, carving 
and pinnacles almost efface the 
Madonna and saints, who show 
a peasantlike uneasiness amid so 
much splendor. Such is the char- 
acter of the triptych in the Vati- 
can, which is dated 1466. It rep- 
resents rather favorably Niccolo’s 
at once slender and ambitious 
talent. 

Such obscure artists as we 


have been considering* could 


: ; y Fic. 173. Melozzo da Forli. Pope 
maintain the idealism out of Sixtus IV and his Court. 


which a Perugino should grow, Fresco. — Vatican. 


could provide his spiritual background. They could do little 
to nurture him on the positive side. That task fell to men of 
greater power, who had saturated themselves with Florentine 
realism — Melozzo da Forli* and Luca Signorelli. Both were 
pupils of that giant among Umbro-Florentines, Piero della 
Francesca. Melozzo was born in 1438 and early employed by 
the Dukes of Urbino. He practices an energetic draughtsman- 
ship both in decoration and portraiture, indulges the boldest 
foreshortening, adds a positive athleticism to that pride of 
life which we have noted in more static form in his master. 
Thus his frescoes for the domes of the sacristy of the Santa 
Casa at Loreto, and the justly famous fragments of playing 


274 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


angels now exhibited in the sacristy of St. Peter’s, at 
Rome reveal a strength and measured audacity which at once 
rival the contemporary effort of Mantegna at Mantua and 
forecast the more pagan exuberance of Mantegna’s greatest 


Fic. 174. Luca Signorelli. Pan, God of Music. — Berlin. 


pupil, Correggio. This robust and masculine manner appears 
in a more restrained and traditional form in the superb fresco 
portraits of Pope Sixtus IV and his Court, Figure 173, in the 
Vatican. Such work transcends Umbrian standards. 

Even more does the intense and rugged art of Melozzo’s 
fellow disciple, Luca Signorelli. Born at Cortona in 1441, we 
know little of his early career except that he studied with Piero 
della Francesca, passed to Florence and was permanently 
swayed by the anatomical and passionate realism of Antonio 
Pollaiuolo. Signorelli’s early work is obscure to us. We may 
well study him first in the pastoral mythology, Pan, God of 
Harmony, Figure 174, now at Berlin. It was painted about 
1490 for the Medici, for the villa for which Botticelli designed 


THE GOLDEN AGE 276 


the Primavera and Birth of Venus. It is inferior to its com- 
panion pieces in imagination and delicacy, and particularly in 
color, but in its own measured way it echoes delightfully the 
poetic wistfulness of early Florentine humanism. Similar qual- 
ities of imagination are in the great fresco The Last Days of 
Moses, in the Sistine Chapel, painted in 1482 after his design. 
But the vein is exceptional in Signorelli. Soon he gave himself 
to a rugged realism, unpleasing | 
in his religious themes. Meeting 
little favor in the great cities, he 
painted many altar-pieces for the 
Umbrian towns. These pictures 
are stern in spirit and leaden in 
color. There is no attempt to 
please. Relentlessly Signorelli 
pursued his personal quest of 
expressive anatomy. Legend tells 
us that, dry-eyed, he sketched 
the fair body of his own mur- 
dered son for the picture of the 
Entombment at Cortona. We , 
see him introducing nude figures ee A A 
into the background of the round = pg. Pre Sionoral menbadonne 
Madonna at the Uffizi, Figure — Uffiz. 

175. Lhe experimentalist dominates the artist. 

In the year 1500, being nearly sixty, he found the real use 
for his truculent art. He was called to paint in the Chapel of 
S. Brixio, in the Cathedral of Orvieto. The subject was the 
Last Judgment. More than fifty years earlier Fra Angelico 
had begun the work with angel choirs in the vaults. With a 
far different temper Signorelli continued the task. At the en- 
trance and back of the Chapel he showed mankind scourged by 
the final plagues. In the four arched spaces at the sides he set 
The Preaching of Antichrist, a sinister scene detailed with all 


276 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the circumstantiality of the Early Renaissance. For the three 
remaining scenes, the Resurrection of the Dead, Figure 176, 
the Condemnation of the Sinful, Figure 177, and the Reward 
of the Just, he invented new modes both of interpretation and 
of composition. How far we are from the solemn assizes of 
Giotto or the garden and labyrinth motives of Fra Angelico! 
In every case we have in the lunette celestial figures, or at 
least supernal, while below we have swarming masses of nude 
folk, bewildered at the forgotten light, aspiring heavenwards 
or shrinking from the clutches of the fiends. 

What distinguishes these frescoes is a magnificently just 
matter-of-factness. Only one question is raised by the artist. 
Given the literal truth of the Book of Revelations, how would 
the last judgment look, and how would one feel if he were in- 
deed there? So he reasons it out —the struggle of the skele- 
tons to push up to the light, their reinvestiture successively 
with sinews, muscles and skin, the embarrassment as a half 
assembled body vainly seeks recognition. And all this he con- 
trasts with the confident, strong bearing of the archangels 
above. Again in the Ascent of the Just to Heaven, the 
aspiration is chiefly physical, magnificently so. These clean 
strong bodies chiefly wish to escape the corruption from 
which the last trump has summoned them. And even the 
guardian angels are less tender than jubilant at the thought 
of fit recruits to replenish St. Michael’s celestial militia. 
Equally the damned wince, not from conscience, but from physi- 
cal dread of the chains and claws and the imminence of the 
eternal fires. 

This sturdy, upright art seems hardly Italian. The spirit of it 
is ruthless and Northern. It mitigates nothing, tells pretty 
much everything, presents the body in its ugliness, disregards 
obvious considerations of style. Yet as a successful blend of a 
vast technical experiment in anatomy with an honest and 
powerful effort of imagination, this is one of the most re- 


THE GOLDEN AGE 277 


Fic. 176. Luca Signorelli. The General Resurrection. 
— Cathedral, Orvieto. 


Fic. 177. Luca Signorelli. The Souls of the Damned.— Cathedral, Orvieto. 


278 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


markable achievements of the Italian Renaissance. It has little 
of the Italian nobility, but it powerfully influenced those who 
had. Perugino and Raphael imitated Signorelli’s orderly ar- 
rangement of his scenes in a double, vertical order, and Michel- 
angelo fed his dream of a heroic world of splendid nudity from 
the drastic visions of Signorelli. Over-rich and over-emphatic 
as Signorelli is, he is also an elemental, tonic power. No one is 
quite the same after a visit to the Chapel of S. Brixio. 

If Signorelli was the greatest character in Umbria before 
Raphael, Pietro Perugino was the finest intelligence and taste. 
He was born in 1446 at Citta della Pieve and at nine years old 
was put with a poor Perugian painter. His early activity is 
matter only of ingenious conjecture. There is an ambiguous 
range of pictures variously ascribed to him and to Fiorenzo di 
Lorenzo, a difficult and rather unimportant problem which I 
willingly let alone. What is certain is that in his early twenties 
Perugino was studying with Verrocchio at Florence alongside 
of Leonardo da Vinci. By 1481 and 1482 Perugino emerges 
artistically full-grown in the Sistine Chapel. 

His superiority, as shown in the fresco of the Giving of the 
Keys to Peter, Figure 118, and in numerous works of his forty- 
two remaining years, is so uniform and almost monotonous that 
its greatness has until recently passed unnoticed. Only such 
critics as Mr. Berenson and Professor Wolfflin have done him 
full justice. He worked upon perfectly clear and conscious 
ideals of simplicity, symmetry, and spaciousness; in all of 
which he took issue with his times. Rejecting the picturesque 
richness and confusion of the Early Renaissance, he took 
counsel of the Byzantine painters and of Fra Angelico at San 
Marco. They taught him the worth of simple geometrical 
forms of figure composition, and how to sacrifice details to 
broad effects. That his groups disposed in simple pyramids, 
oblongs, or ovals should not seem too bare, he cunningly varied 
the positions of the figures, thus relieving the severity of the 


THE GOLDEN AGE 279 


underlying symmetry. Every tilted head, pointed foot and 
swaying thigh has its precise compositional value. As for the 
figures, there is no strenuousness of draughtsmanship, they are 


Fic. 178. Perugino. Mystical Crucifixion. Fresco. — 
Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi. Florence. 
simply good enough. A principle of artistic economy, alien to 
the spirit of the moment, rules here as elsewhere. 

So far he appears as a critic and amender of the Early Re- 
naissance style. His positive contribution was a particularly 
spacious and lovely sort of landscape, an immensity of light and 
air to set behind the restricted patterns of his figures. This 
landscape is a beautiful generalization of the scenery of the 
upper Tiber valley. The forms are few. Feathery trees mark 
the middle distance; a river valley opens gently with inter- 
locking banks toward distant blue mountains. Above a sil- 
very horizon, the heavens gradually deepen to an intense blue, 
accentuated by sparse floating clouds. There are few colors, a 
warm brown, a fresh green, a paler and a deeper blue, a variety 
of grays. With these simple means is attained a sense of 
infinite space and of encompassing peace. 

All these perfections are in the great frescoed Crucifixion 
Figure 178, in the convent of Santa Maria Maddelena dei 


280 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Pazzi, at Florence. The date is 1495, Perugino’s fifty-second 
year. The lyrical quietism of the effect rests on delicate eva- 
sions of the very formal symmetry. Such features as the 
tilted head of the Saint John and 
the three trees at the left bal- 
ancing the Magdalen at the right | 
of the cross are essential. Indeed 
any slight change either in the 
position of the figures or the lines 
of the landscape would produce 
a discord. 

We have a very similar effect 
with the addition of a stately and 
simple architecture in the en- 
throned Madonna of the Vatican. 

Fic. Fr BORE Opies Figure 179. Again the formality 

of the pyramidal pattern is re- 
lieved by varied dispositions of the figures which individually 
considered may seem affected, but which are essential to the 
composition. More overtly emotional but still restrained is 
the Deposition, Figure 180a, of the Uffizi Gallery. It is arranged 
as an oval with catenary internal curves, anticipating much 
more complicated patterns of Raphael. At this moment, 1494, 
no living artist but Leonardo could have woven this group to- 
gether with such certainty of taste, and he could have hardly 
equalled its broad and serene landscape. 

In the first years of the new century Perugino decorated the 
merchants’ exchange of Perugia, the Cambio, with frescoes 
partly religious, partly moral and symbolical. The most 
famous represent the Virtues, Figure 180, in pairs, hovering 
in the heavens with their representatives below. For example, 
Prudence and Justice with the great law-givers. So Fortitude 
and Temperance are represented respectively by the vener- 
able forms of brave Horatius, and Leonidas; of Cato and 


THE GOLDEN AGE 281 


Cincinnatus. It seems that Perugino executed most of this 
latter decoration through assistants, and it has been suggested 


that Raphael is responsible both for the design and painting 
of the beautiful Sibyls.’ 


Fic. 180. Perugino. Prudence and Justice with their Representa- 
tives. Fresco. — Caméio, Perugia. 


Like most of his contemporaries Perugino outlived his 
fame. He was insulted by Michelangelo, criticized for repeat- 
ing his figures, thrust out of the Vatican in 1508 and superseded 
by his former helper, Raphael. And his exquisite art in his 
later years shows a certain relaxation. He died of the plague 
in 1524 and was denied Christian burial, although in his day 
he had painted plague banners to protect the faithful. 

The known atheism of Perugino affords a curious problem. 
How reconcile it with the mild and gentle religiosity of his 
art? Were he a modern artist, one might hold that he entered 
by zsthetic sympathy into experiences of religion which his 
rational self denied. For an atheist of the Renaissance the 


282 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


explanation seems too subtle. They were of tough fibre and 
kept their sympathy logically in hand. Mr. Berenson has 
offered the ingenious explanation that in his noble composition 
in space Perugino appealed to 
emotions which are so nearly 
akin to religion as to be readily 
substituted therefor. In the great 
spaces of Perugino the spirit finds 
liberation and a sense of the 
infinite. Such intuition of infin- 
ity one finds also in personal 
religion, and the two experiences 
are in a degree interchangeable. 
#isthetically satisfactory, this 


é explanation may fail to conyince 
Fic. 180a. Perugino. The De- " 


SoROn ee Ria a devout person. He will want 


to know how the art of an avowed 
atheist enthralled the pious folk inhabiting the valley sanctified 
by the memory of St. Francis. Whatever be the explanation, 
the space composition of Perugino later sufficed to express 
Raphael’s vision of the central mystery of Christianity, of the 
nobility of pagan intellect and of the serene splendor of the 
Grecian Olympians. | 
Raphael Sanzio § is the finest example of the Umbrian virtue 
of teachableness. His course is a series of exquisitely felt 
admirations. His readiness to assimilate any sort of excel- 
lence was his strength, and at times his weakness, for he.was 
not always self-critical enough to reject merits alien to his own 
personality. His admitted primacy rests on perfection of com- 
position, and that perfection represented a beautiful synthesis 
of the methods of Perugino, Fra Bartolommeo, and Leonardo 
da Vinci. In dramatic power, force of draughtsmanship, and 
charm of color many of his contemporaries surpassed him. 
His, indeed, is a triumph of tact and judgment, and not of 


i 


THE GOCDENTAGE 283 


any single achievement. He seems one of the young men of 
the Platonic dialogues come back to earth — graciousiy pru- 
dent, gently effective, superior yet companionable. He ap- 
proached art as his fellow Umbrian, St. Francis, approached 
life, with friendly confidence. He was equally at home with 
noble and artisan, with austere prelate and libertine humanist. 
Men readily gave him their loyalty and women their love. 

Raphael Sanzio was born at Urbino in 1483. His father, 
Giovanni, a mediocre poet and painter, left him an orphan 
at eleven. Raphael’s first steps in painting were probably 
guided by Timoteo Viti, who practiced, partly under Perugino’s 
influence, the timidly idyllic style of the Northern Marches — 
Bologna and Ferrara. Such boyish efforts of Raphael as the 
Orleans Madonna, the Three Graces, and the Dream of a 
Knight, in the National Gallery show Raphael’s complete 
assimilation of this idyllic manner. The little picture at 
London in which a stripling Hercules slumbers between an 
attractive girlish Wisdom and a most innocent efhgy of Vice — 
holding the flower that signifies the primrose path — shows us _ 
Raphael at seventeen and by no means precocious. 

In the year 1500 he was called from Urbino to work in 
Perugino’s home shop at Perugia, soon rising to the position 
of foreman. In four years he made the most devout and com- 
plete assimilation of his master’s style. Such pictures as the 
Coronation of Mary, in the Vatican, and the Marriage of the 
Virgin, Figure 181, at Milan, would surely be reckoned as 
consummate Perugino’s were it not for signatures and old 
tradition. The Marriage of the Virgin in particular is merely 
a rearrangement of Perugino’s composition for the Giving of 
the Keys to Peter. But Raphael has eliminated unnecessary 
incidents and has outdone Perugino himself in sweetness and 
calm. The picture was finished in 1504, and that year Raphael 
took letters of recommendation from his first patroness, the 
Duchess of Urbino, to the Magistracy of Florence. 


284. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Imagine a youngster of twenty-one who has diligently 
mastered a pictorial style only to learn that it is already obso- 
lete. That is Raphael taking the manner of Perugino to a Flor- 
ence agog over the battle cartoons of Leonardo and Michel- 


Fic. 181. Raphael. Marriage Fic. 182. Raphael. Maddalena 
of the Virgin. — Milan. Doni. — Pitti. 


angelo. The coolness with which young Raphael faced this 
emergency is characteristic. In four years he made himself 
over into a realistic draughtsman. Abandoning the ready- 
made faces and figures of Perugino, he wisely held to Perugino’s 
sweetness and spacious compositional patterns. Young Raphael 
achieves an extraordinary act of criticism. He takes from the 
reformers just what he needs and no more — from Leonardo 
his incisiveness and psychology as a draughtsman and his dense 
and rich compositional patterns, from Fra Bartolommeo his 
dignity and monumentality, from Michelangelo very little 
as yet; and, withal, he retains whatever still seemed valuable 
from his Umbrian experience. Thus with resolute and unper- 
turbed intelligence within four years he completely recon- 


ae 


THE GOLDEN AGE 285 


structed his style, and put himself on a parity with older 
contemporaries who had been experimenting for a score of 
years. 

The steps of this re-education are most interesting. In 
1505 he did the portraits of Agnolo Doni and his wife Mad- 
dalena, Figure 182. The posture of the woman is that of 
Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. ‘The draughtsmanship and charac- 
terization are severe, the hint of Umbrian landscape is a 
survival. In later portraits we shall see the elimination of 
accessories, the line yielding to the most refined modelling in 
light and dark, the effect concentrated without insistency. A 
comparison of the Doni portraits with those of ten years 
later, the Julius IJ and the Fornarina, will tell better than 
words of the tendency of Raphael’s portraiture towards its 
ultimate mastery. 

In 1505 Raphael returned for a time to Perugino to paint 
the fresco of the Trinity at the Convent of San Severo. 
In the splendid geometrical pattern he has already improved 
on the flat groupings of Perugino. The consistory of Saints 
bends back in depth after the fashion of a semi-dome. 
Raphael borrows the new motive from Fra Bartolommeo’s 
fresco of the Last Judgment painted in 1499 for the Florentine 
Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. Sixteen years later Perugino 
added the languid saints at the base of the Trinity, a touching 
reversal of the natural relations of master and pupil. As for 
Raphael, in a single experiment he has mastered the sort of 
symmetrical composition in depth which should suffice within 
five years for his masterpiece, the Disputa. 

The matronly sweetness of Raphael’s early madonnas has 
won them affection from the first. With increasing dig- 
nity, they retain a hint of the girlish refinement of their pre- 
decessors of the Early Renaissance. But they are less as- 
sertively fastidious, more normal and natural. All these ob- 
vious reasons for liking them are sound, and these pictures 


286 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


afford as well an insight into Raphael’s consciously directed 
studies. ‘The effect is ever towards richer and more compli- 
cated composition, and towards more interesting and stylistic 
dispositions of the figures. The naturalness is that of taste 


Fic. 184. Raphael. La Belle 
Jardiniére. — Louvre. 


Fic. 183. Raphael. Madonna 
del Granduca. — Pitti. 


and calculation. Near the beginning of the series we have the 
lovely Madonna of the Grand Duke, 1505, Figure 183. ‘The 
upright, frontal position and form and serene oval of the face 
recall Perugino. But reality has supervened, — Perugino never 
painted such a Bambino, — and for the sake of concentration 
the background is kept plain. We see in the Madonna of the 
Tempi Family, at Munich, the Madonna turned in three- 
quarters position, the pose energized, the body swaying in a 
slight counterpoise. Then he tries seated poses which offer the 
triangular pattern of Leonardo. Perhaps the earliest of this 
series is the lovely Cowper Madonna, now in the Widener Col- 
lection. Soon he adds figures, constructs the pyramids more 


THE GOLDEN AGE 287 


ornately and restores the background of landscape. At the 
head of this line is the Madonna of the Finch in the Pitti. 
It illustrates that gracious formality which Leonardo estab- 
lished in the Madonna of the Rocks. Finding the balance of 
the two standing nude children 
a little too obvious, Raphael car- 
ries the motive to its perfection 
in the Belle Jardiniére of the 
Louvre. Figure 184. Here, to 
break the rigid symmetry, the St. 
John kneels, and _ superfluous 
trees have been cleared away 
from the background. He seeks 
further to enrich the pyramid, 
and in the Madonna of the 
Canigiani family, at Munich, Fig- 
ure 185, finished in 1507, we 


_ Fic. 185. Raphael. Canigiani 
have at once the densest of sym Hole Fane Mena 


metries and the stylistic hand- 
ling of all the figures in active and counterpoised attitudes. In 
two years the process is complete. Later, in the Madonna of 
the Fish and of the Pearl, executed by students, Raphael will 
adopt diagonal arrangements, he will take up the old Circular 
form in the Madonna of the Chair, and will amplify the 
simple patterns of Perugino in the Sistine Madonna and the 
Madonna of Foligno. The forms and faces will become graver, 
nobler, more mature, but the whole course is fully anticipated 
in the joyous and lucid years of experiment from 1505 to 1507. 
In that year Raphael pulled himself together to produce a 
masterpiece and signally failed. So far he must have seemed 
only a charming painter, a more gracious Fra Bartolommeo or 
a more learned Albertinelli, he will now surpass Leonardo and 
equal Michelangelo —a perilous competition for a man of 
twenty-five. In 1507 Atalanta Baglioni of Perugia ordered a 


288 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Deposition to be set over the tomb of her murdered son, the 
tyrant Astorre. Raphael, in a theme properly lyrical and pa- 
thetic, tries to add tumult and drama —tries too hard. At 
first he adopted a scheme very similar to that of Perugino’s 
masterpiece, with the 
dead Christ on the 
ground, a quietly 
mourning group and a 
spacious __ landscape. 
The design is shown 
in a pen sketch at Ox- 
ford. He rejects this 
motive as too quiet 
and familiar. By suc- 
cessive efforts and ex- 
aggerations he arrives 
at the picture which 


eee §=69we now see in the Bor- 
Fic. 186. Raphael. The Entombment. ghese Gallery. Figure 


— Borghese, Rome. 


186. It has become a 
disagreeable tangle of legs, a display of over-muscular arms 
which support nothing — a welter of histrionic gestures. The 
clew to the trouble is in the effective but meaningless pose of 
the woman at the right, which is borrowed directly from 
Michelangelo’s Madonna of the Doni Family. Figure 195. The 
landscape no longer liberates the spirit, but almost crowds 
the figures out of the frame. Doubtless so self-critical an 
artist as Raphael learned much from this failure. It must have 
shown him that the rich density and measured dramatic effect 
of Leonardo were not as accessible as he had thought, and 
he accordingly restudied the whole problem of energetic mon- 
umental design. Moreover it showed him, at least for some 
years, that Michelangelo was the worst of models for him and 
threw him back upon his proper exemplars, Perugino and Fra 


eo ae 


THE GOLDEN AGE 289 


Bartolommeo — in short, upon that native humility which was 
at once his charm as a man and his strength as an artist. 

In 1508 Raphael was called to Rome through the influence of 

a former Urbino friend, Bramante, now the architect of new St. 
Peter’s. The task set by Pope Julius II was the decoration of 
the four new antechambers called the Stanze. About the same 
time Michelangelo began on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. 
Thus the two artists worked within two hundred feet of each 
other, but held apart partly by a natural rivalry, and even more 
by the irascible and suspicious nature of Michelangelo. And 
two masterpieces were produced as from two different worlds 
— Michelangelo’s all tragic and perturbed, Raphael’s all hope- 
ful and serene. Between 1509 and 1511 Raphael frescoes the 
Camera della Segnatura, mostly with his own hand. The 
scheme comprised the finest leading ideals of contemporary 
humanism, and the little room is the most important of docu- 
‘ments for the student of the Renaissance. Religious authority, 
legal justice, secular philosophy and science, the arts — such 
are the four great themes impersonated on the side walls, and 
echoed in symbol and human illustration on the beautiful 
ceiling; these are the props of a perfect society. 

Religious authority and theology are represented by the 
famous fresco called erroneously the Dispute concerning the 
Sacrament, Figure 187. Christ, as the fully revealed member 
of the Trinity, sits in a heaven rayed and studded with gold; 
beside him sit the prophets and apostles — the actual witnesses 
of his passion. The seated group sweeps grandly back de- 
scribing a sort of semi-dome in space. Below and precisely in 
the centre, on an altar, glitters the wafer which in the recurrent 
miracle of the Mass becomes Christ’s body. To right and left 
of the altar are closely compacted and agitated groups insist- 
ing on the truth of the miracle of transubstantiation. These 
are the martyrs and church doctors, those who after the apos- 
tolic age either in experience or divine intuition certified to 


290 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the central mystery of the Church. The upper group is com- 
posed after the fashion of Fra Bartolommeo and Perugino, 
is a mere expansion of Raphael’s fresco at San Severo; the 
lower group is held together after the fashion of Leonardo da 


Fic. 187. Raphael. La Disputa— The Truth of the Eucharist. Fresco. 


— Vatican. 


Vinci’s Last Supper, the vehemence of the particular gestures 
being assimilated in a running balance of thrust against thrust, 
so that the whole effect is of a rich and energetic harmony. The 
figures themselves are established adequately, but in draughts- 
manship are inferior either to Leonardo’s or Michelangelo’s. 
With the thriftiness of a born decorator, Raphael makes the 
figure count in its place and beyond that takes no unnecessary 
pains. It might indeed be argued that the decoration would be 
worse as a whole if the parts were more perfect. Finally, note 
how essentially classical, Roman, juridical the motive is; how 
‘concrete and material. Raphael seeks to express nothing more 
mystical than the obvious equation of Christ and the host, and 


THE GOLDEN AGE 291 


he merely cites a multitude of witnesses to prove that the equa- 
tion is true. This very simplicity of motive has thoroughly 
humanized what might have been a tenuous theme. ‘The pic- 


Fic. 188. Raphael. The School of Athens. Fresco. — Vatican. 


ture is a magnificent conclave out of many ages, a symbol of 
the cumulative splendor of the Catholic tradition. 

On the opposite wall, in the School of Athens, Figure 188, 
Raphael pictures a similar continuity of human thought on 
the secular plane. The arched space opens into a vast basilica 
whose gods, represented as colossal statues at the sides, are 
Apollo and Minerva. Raphael has studied the Basilica of 
Constantine and has modestly scanned Bramante’s plans for 
new St. Peter’s. He invents a vaulted interior more impressive 
than any that man has ever built. Within finite bounds he 
suggests the infinity of Umbrian space. Without the figures, 
or with quite other figures, we should still have a great pic- 
ture. But the group is as nobly disposed as the architecture. 


292 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


You may imagine a foreshortened ring of which the reverend 
forms of Plato and Aristotle are the twin jewels. Aristotle 
at the right is in the vigor of middle age as a scientist should be. 
His disciples crowd towards him or gather in secondary groups 
about some leader. Science is social and co-operative. Raphael 
puts himself in this group. Plato at the left is immensely old 
and feeble. Speculative philosophy requires only strength ~ 
of spirit. His disciples are generally isolated in personal 
meditation. Philosophical truth is arrived at not in society 
but in solitude. Certain ardent young faces recall Leonardo da 
Vinci, and the construction of the group is his. We have link- 
ing motives, like that of sprawling Diogenes on the steps, 
curves that repeat or counter the vault above, turns and thrusts 
of bodies in active balance, an energetic variety within a serene 
harmony. The mood is less agitated than that of the Disputa, 
while the composition is freer. Human science and philosophy 
are at once less bound than is theology, and move more equably 
because they strive for more readily attainable ends. Like its 
companion piece, the School of Athens is both a citation of 
witnesses and a profession of faith, of faith in the capacity of 
the human mind. 

The fresco of Parnassus repeats approximately the group- 
ing of the School of Athens, but changes the mood to one of 
lyrism, and shifts the scene to a hill top. About Apollo and 
the Muses wander the forms of the elder and recent poets. 
Often the faces are a bit insipid, but no one thinks of that, so 
easy are the postures, so gracious the whole effect, so instinct 
with the quiet good breeding of an academic pastoral. All 
the Umbrian reticence and discretion and humility of Raph- 
ael are in this beautifully calculated work. It betrays, too, 
certain ominous symptoms of display, in the way, for example, 
in which the figures at the window protrude beyond the wall. 
Primarily this is only a way of softening two ugly angles of the 
window opening, but it is also a concession to Michelangelo’s 


THE GOLDEN AGE 293 


dangerous habit of painting away the architecture. All the forms 
have an amplitude and dignity akin to that of classical sculp- 
ture. Hellas is for Raphael no longer a far-away, inaccessible 
world, as it was, for example, to Botticelli. Raphael has effec- 


Fic. 189. Raphael. Prudence, Temperance, Force — generally called 
Jurisprudence. Fresco. — Vatican. 

tively reconstructed it, in part by a gracious act of intuition, 
in part by study of the wall paintings and statues of old Rome. 

The decoration of the Camera della Segnatura was completed 
triumphantly with the fresco symbolizing Jurisprudence, Fig- 
ure 189, in which Raphael invents a new and beautiful compo- 
sitional formula. Having to deal with a lunette awkwardly 
shortened by the window, he used three seated figures signi- 
fying the judging, restraining and rewarding aspects of justice. 
There is no strict centrality and no exact symmetry. The 
large curves of the figures play off from each other in a continu- 
ous rhythm melting into the bounding curve. One may con- 
ceive it in terms of the growth of plants, as so many sprays 
meeting, diverging, opposing each other, and all managing to 
conform to the line of an arch. It is a type of composition that 
Raphael will develop with still greater subtlety in the Sibyls 
of the Madonna della Pace. 

When Raphael finished the Camera della Segnatura he was 


204. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


about twenty-eight years old. His remaining nine years added 
certain remarkable portraits, the Castiglione, the Leo X, Figure 
190, the Fornarina and the young Cardinal at Madrid, one 
sublime altar-piece, in the Sistine 
Madonna; a dramatic: wimaster- 
piece in the Transfhguration, and 
a few frescoes. But in the main 
these are years of retrogression. 
His popularity had got beyond 
his power to utilize it. Michel- 
angelo in 1512 had unveiled the 
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. 
Raphael, with all Rome, felt 
qualities of energy and grandeur 
which he himself lacked, and, 


with less than his usual intel- 


Fic. 190. Raphael. Pope Leo 
X — Pitiz. 


ligence, began a fruitless emula- 
tion. The last three Stanze show 
in their very look that Raphael is no longer his unperturbed 
self. The figures no longer hold up their place on the wall, they 
crowd out toward the spectator appallingly. The compositions 
no longer show restful patterns which conform to the flatness 
of the wall. There are disturbing flashes of light and obscure 
gaps. The figures themselves are contorted and vehement; 
straining sinews and knotted muscles are advertised for their 
own sake. Emulating the sublimity of Michelangelo, Raphael 
only achieves sensationalism. Then he is no longer a painter 
but a director of painting. Nothing but the designs are now 
his own. The working sketches and cartoons are by his pupils, 
who work under the sway of a young Mantuan of facile and 
brutal talent, Giulio Romano. One passes through the last 
three Stanze with mixed feelings. The high pleasures of art 
are left behind; remains the spell of great power and intelli- 
gence now almost untouched by taste. 


THE GOLDEN AGE 295 


The Stanza of Heliodorus finished in 1514 contains a su- 
perbly dramatic fresco of Heliodorus, Figure 191, thrust by a 
celestial horseman from the temple he would profane. The exe- 
cution is mostly by Giulio Romano. Raphael himself appears 


Fic. 191. Raphael. Heliodorus driven from the Temple by a Celestial 
Horseman. Fresco. — Vatican. 


in one of his most massive designs, the Mass of Bolsena. 
The theme is a sceptical priest persuaded of the truth of 
the sacramental miracle through the bleeding of the wafer. 
The miracle takes place in the presence of Pope Julius II. 
There is a weight of character in the picture which is unique in 
Raphael’s mural painting. The adjustment of masses is in an 
impeccable symmetry all the more difficult that the space is 
irregular and refractory. The fine figures that carry the theme 
down into the narrow rectangles alongside the window are in 
part repainted by a young rival of Raphael, Michelangelo’s 
protegé, Sebastiano del Piombo. 

The Chamber of the Incendio, finished in 1517, shows even 
more plainly the devastating influence of Michelangelo. The 
subject is a fire arrested miraculously by Pope Leo IV, Figure 
192. It is a magnificent display of poses and anatomy, an 


296 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


artistic show window rather than a decoration. The eye 
wanders in bewilderment to find the picture and finds 
nothing but isolated, splendid forms posing superbly or simu- 
lating unfelt emotions. From the point of view of decora- 


Fic. 192. Raphael’s Design executed by Giulio Romano. Il Borgo. 
The Fire at Rome. — Vatican. 


tion, the space has been systematically violated. Again the re- 
morseless hand of Giulio Romano is everywhere felt. ‘This is 
the last anteroom of the Vatican which Raphael saw finished, 
though he left to his helpers many sketches for the two remain- 
ing Stanze. 

In 1516 and 1517 Raphael is superintending half a dozen 
great tasks at once. From the early months of 1515 he had 


THE GOLDEN AGE 297 


been Bramante’s successor as architect of new St. Peter’s, 
the same year he became superintendent of all archzological 
excavations at Rome. To these heavy administrative charges 
he adds the decoration of the Farnesina, the continuation of 
the Stanze, designs for mosaics in Santa Maria del Popolo, 
plans for two private palaces, sixteen cartoons for the Vatican 
tapestries, and the preliminary studies for the Loggia of the 
Vatican. He designs half a dozen great altar-pieces and paints 
with his own hand the Portrait of Leo X, the marvelous St. 
Cecilia at Bologna, the Sibyls of the Pace, and the Sistine 
Madonna. He was rich and beloved, great nobles pressed 
him with social attentions, and a cardinal vainly sought to 
ally him with his family by marriage. 

We can consider these multiform activities of the later 
years only in general terms. The tapestry cartoons at South 
Kensington representing the miracles of St. Peter and St. Paul 
complete that magnificent line of narrative painting that be- 
gins with Giotto. Raphael works for simplicity and con- 
centration and dignity in an eminently classic spirit. One 
feels the influence of Masaccio. Though rudely executed to 
guide the Flemish weavers and executed by the assistant, 
Penni, the mind of Raphael controls the form throughout. 
Such designs as the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Paul 
Preaching at Athens, the Death of Ananias, the Blinding of 
the Sorcerer Elymas are among the marvels of our art. Yet 
many of these designs are over-studied, and few I feel fully 
bear the comparison with the best of Giotto and Masaccio. 
A little over-emphasis of style recalls the bitter word of 
Michelangelo concerning Raphael—that he succeeded not by 
grace of nature but by study. 

The frescoes of the Life of Psyche, in the Farnesina, are 
beautiful in arrangement and full of a robust paganism. But 
the wall is overcharged with the weight of figures which too 
often show Giulio Romano’s heavy and insolent hand. All 


298 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the same, the whole effect is gracious and the garlanded 
borders of the coves and spandrels by Giovanni da Udine are 
delightful. ‘To realize how much these frescoes lost from 
student execution one has only to consider the Galatea, Figure 


SS DIU 


Fic. 192a. Raphael. Galatea. Fic. 193. Raphael. The Sistine 
Fresco. — Farnesina, Rome. Madonna. — Dresden. 
Ig2a, in the same Palace, which Raphael painted himself in 
1514. It is on the verge of over-ripeness, but keeps its saving 
element of restraint. In answer to an inquiry fromthat great 
diplomat and gentleman, Count Baldassare Castiglione, Raph- 
ael wrote that though beautiful models were not rare, for the 
Galatea as for other figures, he had followed only an idea; 
and indeed the mind’s eye is what ever counts with Raphael. 
Raphael’s final work for the Vatican was the decoration of 
an open, vaulted Loggia. He invented fifty-two little Bible 
stories, leaving most of the painting to his assistant, Penni, 
and he drew about the arches, pilasters and window frames the 
most delicious arabesques. From study of similar decoration 
in the Baths of Titus he worked out a style, crisp, formal and 
sophisticated, and as various as Gothic ornament itself. Geo- 
metrical, animal, and plant forms meet and blend audaciously. 


THE GOLDEN AGE 299 


There is interplay of spiral and angular motives, the whole 
effect is highly playful and ingenious. The style has had vogue 
to our own day and still speaks to us charmingly of the 
unserious side of Raphael. 
Perhaps in the harassed, com- 
petitive years we have been 
describing, Raphael turned occa- 
sionally upon his own ingenuity, 
and refreshed himself by renew- 
ing these simple and gracious 
modes in which he had _ been 
bred. Such a theory would ac- 
count for the Sistine Madonna, 
Figure 193, and in part for his 
last picture, the Transfiguration. 
The most memorable of Raph- 
ael’s Madonnas is based on the 
lucid symmetry of Perugino. 


Although, for greater concen- 


Fic. 194. Raphael. The Trans- 


figuration. — Vatican. 


tration, the background is merely 
a sky, the hovering figures are 
easily spaced in the usual triangle. The effect is ineffably 
grand and gentle. A quiet silvery cloudland is created and 
filled by the devotion of the attendant saints and the inspired 
glance of the Virgin and her Son. With all the resources of 
the Renaissance, Raphael has expressed an emotion as intense 
and reverent as that of Fra Angelico. It is an amazing act of 
the sympathetic intelligence, for there is no reason to suppose 
that the painter was ever a deeply religious spirit. 

Almost as traditional was the unfinished picture before 
which in springtime of 1520 Raphael’s body lay in state. The 
Transfiguration, Figure 194, repeats the method of the Disputa- 
The celestial group of Christ and Moses and Elijah is disposed 
as Perugino would have counselled, in a swaying triangular 


300 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


group set before the gulf of the firmament. Raphael painted 
this part with his own hand. The lower part, which was left 
to Giulio Romano to finish, rests on the maxims and practice of 
Leonardo. An energetic variety compelled into a close balance 
is the ideal, a formal order which contains and softens other- 
wise extravagant expressions and gestures. ‘There is perhaps 
intended not merely an illustration of the Gospel text, but also 
the contrast between that life of contemplation towards which 
the soul aspires, and that world of suffering of mind and body 
which presses closely upon our rare moments of spiritual 
escape. 

Even that world of facts had been very kind to Raphael. 
It was fitting then that in his last days he should forget the 
haunting spectre of Michelangelo’s sublimity, and should use 
his last forces in an imitation which was a sort of gratitude 
to those two great masters who had set him on the right way. 
One would like to believe that the Sistine Madonna and the 
Transfiguration are the sign that Raphael when overtaken by 
an untimely death was purging himself of an unfruitful rivalry, 
and becoming once more master of his own soul. Yet since 
even Michelangelo shipwrecked on the Michelangelesque, it 
is an open question whether Raphael could ever have perma- 
nently recovered his natural equipoise. However that be, 
Raphael in the glorious years from 1500 to 1512 resumes and 
perfects every gentle, orderly, and reasonable strain in 
Italian painting. Whether in portraiture or narrative, in 
mythology or symbolism, in pictures of the Madonna or in 
pure decoration, he gave to Italian painting its final stamp. 
He achieved a grandeur of space composition akin to the move- 
ment of a symphony, a hidden structure more appealing than 
any separate hue or form. His best work rests on a great 
humility, and his later pride went far towards undoing him as 
an artist. Such pride was the breath of life and the source of 
strength to his rival Michelangelo, the fulfiller and perfector 


THE GOLDEN AGE 301 


of everything that had been insurgent, unbounded and not 
quite reasonable in the art of Florence. 


By a peculiar irony all that was valuable in such truculent 
and self-suficing predecessors as Donatello and Bertoldo, 
Andrea del Castagno, Antonio Pollaiuolo and Luca Signorelli 
was finally concentrated in the small and ill-favored body of 
a neurasthenic. There is the tragedy of Michelangelo® in its 
simplest terms. A Titan in capacity to feel and work, he 
lived in an atmosphere of suspicion and fear. ‘Thrice he ran 
away from physical danger, once was virtually a military de- 
serter. To unworthy dependent relatives he gave lavishly, 
scolding and fretting as he gave. He deliberately affronted 
two of the most courteous and accomplished colleagues, Leon- 
ardo da Vinci and Perugino. He suspected the worst of his 
gracious and generous rival, Raphael. From a Roman studio 
as unkempt and filthy as its owner, he snarled at the world 
and himself like a dog from a kennel. 

Yet, note the paradox, this snarling is embodied in fine 
poetry, and this haggard and more than untidy artist is the 
friend of such elect spirits as Tommaso Cavalieri and Vittoria 
Colonna. Transient solaces. Near the end of his long life he 
Whites? s— 


“Alas! Alas! again and once again 
I see my past and there I find not one — 
In all, not one whole day that has been mine.” 


These were the words of a man who was admired like a god 
and had achieved a lifework of unexampled copiousness and 
athleticism. 

The great enigma, how Michelangelo converted what are 
usually weaknesses into sources of artistic strength, may best 
be faced in his life and works. He was born at Caprese in 1475, 
soon taken back to Florence and put to nurse with a stone- 


302 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


cutter’s wife, with whose milk he later used to say he sucked 
in the mallets and chisels he wielded so powerfully. At thirteen 
he was articled to Ghirlandaio as a paid assistant and doubt- 
less did some minor work on those prettiest of frescoes in the 
choir of Santa Maria Novella. 
Extricating himself from an un- 
congenial task, he became one of 
the protegés of Lorenzo de’ Me- 
dici, studying the antique mar- 
bles of the Medici Gardens under 
the kindly guidance of old Ber- 
toldo. There he mingled freely 
for three years in the most 
learned and gentle society of the 


‘time. He mastered anatomy and 


Fig. 195. Michelangelo. Holy : . 
Fike or heTol meter modelling, searched the com 


positional secrets of. Masaccio. 
Soon Savonarola’s revolution dismantled that artistic paradise 
which had been the Medici Gardens, and Michelangelo became 
what he frequently was afterwards, a fugitive and a solitary 
man, without either fixed friendships or abiding place. 

How he made himself great in sculpture is not our theme. 
He was thirty and already the master of the David and the 
Pieta before he began to be a painter. His first commission, 
in 1505, was for a Holy Family, Figure 195, in medallion form 
for Agnolo Doni, who at the same time was having his portrait 
painted by Raphael. The picture as we see it in the Uffizi 
shows a master who thinks in fresco. The brown flesh, the dull 
yellows and blues of the draperies could have come from the 
Brancacci chapel. Remarkable is the complete waiver of charm 
and sweetness. The superb figures are skilfully contorted into 
interesting poses, the circle is densely filled and the few inter- 
stices left by the main figures are filled with athletic nudes. 
The aim, which is successfully attained, is an austere grandeur. 


THE GOLDEN AGi 303 


There is to be no ordinary human appeal in our youthful 
Lord and his parents. 

At this moment Leonardo was already well advanced on the 
cartoon for the Battle of the Standard, treating it in terms of 
literal narrative. In 1505 Michel- 
angelo received a signal honor in 
the commission for the companion 
fresco, the Battle of Pisa. Both 
were for the Hall of the Great 
Council. We can imagine Maichel- 
angelo casting about for a reason 
to abandon a narrative treatment 
and to find one that could be ex- 
pressed by the nude. He found 
it in an’ incident in Leonardo 4 
Aretino’s Chronicle. It seemed & mer i a] 
that the trumpet found the Flor- Fic. 196. Michelangelo. Detail 


; nee from Cartoon of the Bathers, 
entine men-at-arms bathing in the by the contemporary engraver, 


Marcantonio. 
Arno. Here was the theme of 


what was properly called The Bathers. Great muscular forms 


Baki fa es 


are drawing themselves up the bank, and are hurrying into 
clothes and armor. We have not a fight, but its alarm and im- 
minence, a fine imaginative substitute for the obvious event. 
The picture was never executed, and the cartoon, which was 
the marvel of its day, was soon destroyed, but Michelangelo’s 
sketches tells us something of the composition, and the con- 
temporary engraver, Marcantonio, Figure 196, has left us a 
masterly print of the central group. It is plain that Michel- 
angelo made a display of minute anatomy that put his con- 
temporaries to shame, plain also that he subordinated this 
feature to monumental effect. The failure to execute the fresco 
and the destruction of the cartoon must count among the 
capital losses in the history of art. : 

Burdened already with the impossible task of the tomb of 


304 HISTORY OF ‘ITALIAN (PAINTINGs# 


Julius II, Michelangelo was called to Rome to fresco the vault 
of the Sistine Chapel. Contemporary gossip believed that he 
was proposed by the jealous and shifty Bramante, architect of 


Fic. 197. Michelangelo. The two Western Compartments of the 
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: God parting Light from Darkness; God 
creating the Sea and Plants. Example of the Decorative Scheme. 

St. Peter’s, in the hope of discrediting him. If so, Bramante 

reckoned ill. At first Michelangelo planned a very modest 

scheme of colossal figures of Apostles in the twelve spandrels. 

Soon, dismissing his incompetent helpers, he attacked single- 

handed the present great scheme. He worked at it four bitter 

years, and came out of it temporarily crippled and with eyes 
distorted from the constant strain of looking upwards. The 

ceiling was unveiled on All Saint’s Day of 1512 and has been a 

portent ever since. | 
Enter the Sistine Chapel, turn your back to the overwhelm- 

ing apparition of the Last Judgment, and your eye will natur- 
ally scek the lightest part of the rich decoration. In a long 


THE GOLDEN AGE 305 


strip, down the centre of the ceiling, made up of nine oblongs 
alternately large and small, colossal figures stand out against 
the sky. We see the drama of the Creation and Fall of man. 
Nude titans play the minor parts in so many simultaneous 


Fic. 198. Michelangelo. God hovering over the Waters. Shows the 
decorative use of the so-called ‘“‘Slaves.”’ — Vatican. 


scenes. The gigantic, draped form of the Eternal dominates 
the first five. We see him an aged athlete, an expression of ut- 
most physical force, rending chaos asunder into light and dark- 
ness; by his touch illumining the sun and moon; Figure 197, 
drawing out the plants from the earth. I know no more sub- 
lime conception in painting than the figure of God assigning 
the oceans their place, Figure 198. Here is a form that would 
weigh tons hovering with the lightness of an eagle in space, 
with extended beneficent arms as solid as reality but coaxed 
out of the wet plaster with touch and hues as delicate as those 
of a Whistler symphony. A miracle of conception and of work- 
manship. 


306 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


The eye will dwell longest on the great fresco of the Creation 
of Adam, Figure 199. It is all noble energy in the figure of 
God giving life by His touch, all noble languor in the relaxed 
form of Adam only dimly conscious of himself and wistful. 


Fic. 199. Michelangelo. Creation of Adam. 


There could be no truer or more striking illustration of the 
pessimistic view that life was imposed upon the earth and 
brought sadness with it. The titan form of Adam has a singular 
and enigmatic relaxation. He undergoes a gift he has never 
besought and faces it with something between confusion, mis- 
trust and resignation. Perhaps the splendid body would have 
been more at ease, had the soul not been added. Soin a spirit 
of Christian pessimism Michelangelo represents Deity sharing 
its divine powers with the first man. 

At the centre of the ceiling is the creation of Eve, again 
an extraordinary study in lassitude, but with a significant 
difference in the figure of Eve. The woman, the chosen re- 
ceptacle and transmitter of life, accepts the gift eagerly. She 
presses up to God in thankful adoration. No doubts or am- 
biguities here. And what a figure — fit to be the mother of a 
race, exulting already in a fecundity that is to be most griev- 
ous. Compare her action with the languid and almost dis- 
dainful gesture of Adam in the last fresco, and learn that if 


THE GOLDEN AGE 307 


the world is still peopled it is due to the unreflective and un- 
shaken fealty to life of all Eve’s true daughters. 

Perhaps the most decorative subject, if one may use the 
word of themes so morally impressive, is that which repre- 


Fic. 200. Michelangelo. The Temptation and Expulsion from Eden. 


sents the sin of the forbidden fruit and the expulsion from Eden, 
Figure 200. ‘The elements of pathos which are strong in the 
story of Genesis are absent. Michelangelo has not deigned to 
show us a habitable or desirable Eden. We see instead the 
swiftly changing episodes of a great doom, which culminates in 
this scene. Marvelous are the paired groups, superb the con- 
trast between careless appetite under the tree of knowledge 
and utter shame in the exiled pair. One feels that Eve, who 
shrinks most, will soonest recover. Her mission is still valid in 
the world of sin and shame. The composition is the first one 
made up entirely of nudes. 

We may pass quickly over the three compartments devoted 
to the story of Noah. The scale of the figures, especially in the 
Deluge, is too small to count at the distance from the eye. 
These three frescoes were the beginning of the work, the 
proper scale being arrived at through trial and error. In- 
herently the two small oblongs are among the most beautiful 


308 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


in the ceiling, having a stylistic grace that is less marked in 
the earlier more august themes. With the charm of Greek 
intaglios these stories of Noah combine monumentality. 

I have tried to put myself in the position of a visitor to the 


Fic. 201. Michelangelo. The Prophet Jeremiah. 


Sistine Chapel following the instincts of his eye. At this point, 
having glanced over the ceiling, his mind might well come in 
and ask the meaning of a whole of which he is becoming dimly 
aware. The nine scenes above are simply the historic axioms 
upon which the Christian scheme of redemption is based. The 
abstract sparseness of the nine episodes from Genesis is justified 
by the fact that they are less human events than terms in a 
great argument, which runs as follows: We were created in- 
nocent, sinned in our first parents, were spared in the world- 
flood and promised eventual redemption. 

This prolonged drama of redemption is witnessed by a 
solemn chorus of draped male and female figures enthroned 


THE GOLDEN AGE 309 


impressively in the spandrels. Here, representing respec- 
tively the pagan and Hebrew world, are seven sibyls and five 
prophets who had the dim but certain vision of a coming Re- 
deemer. ‘These figures as Hawthorne has well said are “‘neces- 


Fic. 202. Michelangelo. The Fic. 203. Michelangelo. The 
Delphic Sibyl. Libyan Sibyl. 

sarily so gigantic because the weight of thought within them is 
so massive.” They brood quietly or sway with the burden of 
yearning. They are magnificently draped and contrast most 
decoratively with the many nudes of the ceiling. They vary 
in age and disposition. Contrast the actively inspired and 
youthful Daniel, or the fiery Ezechiel with the ponderous 
gravity of Jeremiah, Figure 201. What shades of delicate 
characterization are in the athletic loveliness of the Delphic 
Sibyl, Figure 202, the powerfully concentrated senility of 
The Cumean Sibyl, she who predicted to Virgil the new era 
of salvation, and the aristocratic aloofness of the Libyan 
seeress, Figure 203, most daintily preparing her day’s work in 
divination. 
'; Magnificent is the indignant sprawling form of the unwilling 
prophet Jonah, remanded by the sea to an ungrateful mission. 


310 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


He is the active counterpart of the passive Adam on the ceiling. 
He obeys under protest. The form itself, foreshortened against 
the curve of the spandrel, is a masterpiece of draughtsman- 
ship. Decoratively it is the link between the nudes of the 
ceiling and the draped prophets and sibyls. 

Below the prophetic figures, in the older frescoes of the side 
walls, are set the foreshadowing of the work of salvation in 
the life of Moses and its accomplishment in the life of Christ, 
and the drama closes with Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on 
the altar wall. There Christ separates eternally the saved 
from the damned, echoing the definitive gesture with which 
God in the adjoining ceiling separates light from darkness. 
So the scheme closes with the inexorable logic with which it 
began. 

The decorative task of Michelangelo was to mediate be- 
tween the prophets and sibyls and the ceiling frescoes above, 
and likewise to link the great figures with the side walls below. 
Above, he set a multitude of nude forms. On the massive 
sides of the twelve thrones are four caryatids in two pairs. 
At the top of these piers are seated the lithe forms of nude 
youths, Figure 198, forty in all, supporting medallions and 
bent into every conceivable attitude that might set off the 
flexibility and power of these superb young bodies. But how- 
ever extravagant any single pose may be, it is immediately 
balanced by an opposing thrust from some other body, so that 
the whole composition is locked together into an active and 
thrilling equilibrium. Even the triangles over the coves are 
filled with huddled nudes most adroitly disposed in the narrow 
and refractory spaces. 

Below the prophets and sibyls, the linking motives are made 
up of draped figures. Weakest are the carytid genuises below 
each throne. The triangular splays at the corners contain those 
four bloody and sensational acts which assured the perpetuity 
of God’s Chosen People — the Raising of the Brazen Serpent, 


THE GOLDEN AGE 311 


the Slaying of Goliath and of Holophernes, the Hanging of 
Haaman. 

In the triangles roofing the coves and in the lunettes about 
the arched window heads are family groups of the ancestors 


Fic. 204. Michelangelo. Decoration of Cove over Window. 


and precursors of Christ. Figure 204. The mood of anticipa- 
tion which has been calm and official in the prophets becomes 
agitated, passionate, personal in these half hidden groups. 
So many pilgrims of eternity yearn for the fulfillment that 
shall give meaning to their wanderings —a promised goal 
and rest. Very subtle and beautiful is the contrast be- 
tween the groups sundered by the window heads, individually 
meditative, and those which blend their longing in the 
close relations forced by the triangular coves. What has 
begun as noble abstraction finishes in terms of almost inex- 
pressible tenderness. In color the whole gigantic composition 
is unified by a sonorous chord of yellow and violet which is 
moderately asserted in the ceiling and pushed to the utmost in 


312 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the spandrels. Of the color John La Farge has written: ‘The 
unity 1s so great, the balance of effects so harmonious, 
that it is only by study that we see expressed in the methods 
of the painting the ancient rules, handed down by practice, 
which unite with the latest teach- 
ing of modern scientific color- 
* What a mind it took to 
hold the tumultuous and pathetic 


ing.’ 


details of this great work within 
an enveloping order and calm! 
In framing his great work out 
of nudes relieved by draped 
figures, Michelangelo renewed the 
Grecian practice. Precisely the 
difference between the Sistine 
ceiling and the metopes of the 


Fic. 205. Michelangelo. The | Parthenon, or the frieze of Per- 
Last Judgment. 


gamon, raises the question — 
What does the nude of Michelangelo express? I do not find in 
it, at least in the Sistine ceiling, much of that terribleness, 
terribilta, which has been remarked by critics from Vasari to 
Henri Beyle. It seems to me rather an art of lassitude and 
relaxation, the reluctantly awaking Adam being the clue to 
the mood. Except for the gestures of God and Eve, the ges- 
tures and poses are unspecific. The lithe bodies of the 
slaves are twisted only that they may attain consciousness of 
powers which have no use. The relaxation which marks nearly 
all the nudes, whether in the stories or in the incidental orna- 
ment, is not that of fatigue after action, nor yet that of prepara- 
tion for an ordeal. In barren lassitude we have expressed 
powers which do not imply action or use, but breathe a great 
melancholy. We are far from the splendors of passion and 
achievement, we see humanity confused at a fate that calls 
itself God, a passive factor in an arbitrary process that makes 


THE GOLDEN AGE 313 


the glory of the flesh a vain thing. As a humanist, Michel- 
angelo asserts that failing glory, as a Christian he accepts the 
nothingness of mankind and the rightness of God’s inscrutable 
and apparently cruel designs. Perhaps the spell of Michel- 
angelo, his esthetic, to put it pedantically, is simply the noble 
resignation with which the humanist accepts the Christian 
pessimism as regards this world. And here I may note that 
Rodin has significantly shown that even the forms of Michel- 
angelo are not uprising and resilient like the antique, but com- 
pressed and yielding like those of the Christian Gothic sculptors. 

Twenty-one years after the Sistine ceiling was unveiled, 
Michelangelo began reluctantly the great fresco of the Last 
Judgment, Figure 205. He worked on it for seven years, 
and it was unveiled on Christmas Day of 1541. How the choris- 
ters had the heart to chant the angelic message of peace and 
good will before it, | cannot imagine. Michelangelo was sixty- 
six years old, a disillusioned and embittered man, an alien in 
the corrupt and pleasure loving Rome of Paul III. He has 
put into the Christ all his contempt for mankind. The Christ 
who earlier wrathfully hurled the darts in the Umbrian plague 
banners has become a far darting Apollo, Figure 206, rejoic- 
ing in his dire task. Behind him the murky air is full of 
hurtling contorted angels, in aspect quite indistinguishable 
from fiends, who bear the implements of the Passion. Below, 
the just and unjust rise or fall in knots and festoons of writhing 
nude bodies all equally sinister. The conception is violently 
corporeal, and never elsewhere in painting has the human body 
been used with such ingenuity and power. But it is a power 
that defeats itself. I believe the spectator is not so much 
appalled as confused before the Last Judgment. Its vehemence 
seems so unrelieved and insensate. If this be indeed the goal 
of mankind, no wonder moody Adam in the ceiling above 
faces his Creator with doubt and a hint of distrust. 

Its sheer display of force won all contemporaries, and the 


314. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


French critic and superman, Stendhal, has highly praised the 
work for its burning energy. While not sharing his enthusi- 
asm, I gladly refer the reader to his admirable pages. In my 
own opinion the creative ardor of Michelangelo had waned by 


Fic. 206. Michelangelo. Christ with the Virgin and the Apostles. 
From the Last Judgment. 

this time. He offers, instead, his spleen, which is more valuable 
than most men’s genius, and his amazing technical skill. 
Michelangelo has become Michelangelesque. That is deplor- 
ably true in the frescoes for the Pauline Chapel which were 
finished in 1547, his seventy-second year. Nothing is left but 
sensationalism, and the Pope does well not to exhibit these 
works. As regards humanity, Michelangelo’s vein is com- 
pletely exhausted. He still is capable of exquisite calculation, 
as in the design for the dome of St. Peter’s, still retains a de- 
monic capacity for work and emotion, but the sculptor in him 
is nearly dead and the painter completely so, The poet of 


THE GOLDEN. AGE. Bis 


the rugged sonnets has superseded them both. When he died 
at 89, in 1564, the little illfavored body was honored like that 
of a king. His sheer power had swept the whole rising genera- 
tion of artists under his sway. To their own hurt and to the 
bankruptcy of the Golden Age. 

Such forms as Michelangelo’s are tolerable only when pos- 
sessed by that melancholy poetry of his which gives them 
meaning. If the serene intelligence of a Raphael had not 
found emotions to fill such forms, if Michelangelo himself 
in his later years falls back on a monotonous formula of terrible- 
ness, what hope was there for such uninspired imitators as 
the Venustis, Volterras, and Vasaris? One and all, they en- 
tertained monstrous delusions of effortless attainment ~~ 
cleverly contorted their nudes, shrewdly calculated their terrors. 
And the Roman art of the Golden Age, forgetting both the wise 
humility of Umbria and the reasonable pride of Florence, 
suddenly collapsed in the ugliest and most irrational ostenta- 
tion. Michelangelo had passed — to fulfill and to destroy. 


ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER VI 


A CONTEMPORARY LIST OF GREAT ARTISTS, BEFORE I510 


In an offhand mention in The Courtier Baldasarre Castiglione tells 
us who seemed to be great artists to a cultured and well-informed 
gentleman about the year 1508. Titian had not yet emerged and of the 
older men only Leonardo da Vinci and Mantegna are remembered. 
As seniors, they are the first mentioned. 


“‘ Again various things give equal pleasure to the eyes, so that we can 
with difficulty decide what are more pleasing to them. You know that 
in painting Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna, Raphael, Michelangelo, 
Giorgio da Castelfranco are very excellent, yet they are all unlike in 
their work; so that no one of them seems to lack anything in his own 
manner, since each is known as the most perfect in his style.” 


The Book of the Courter by Count Baldesar Castiglione, translated by 
Leonard Ekstein Opdycke, New York, 1903, p. 50. 


316 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


MICHELANGELO ON RENAISSANCE COUNTERPOISE 


It is said then that Michelangelo once gave his advice to Marcoda 
Siena, his pupil, that “one should make the figure pyramidal, spiral, 
(serpentinata) and multiplied by one, two, and three.” Lomazzo 
Tratiato, Milan, 1484, p. 23. The pose, that is, should be contained geo- 
metrically, should display opposing thrusts, and should be mathemati- 
cally proportioned within the inclosing geometrical form. 


VASARI ON THE ‘‘ MODERN STYLE” 


Vasari’s account of the Grand Style or “Third Manner,” in the 
Preface to Part III (De Vere’s translation, Vol. IV, pp. 79-85) is still 
authoritative. He praises the artists before Leonardo, but finds in them 
a certain hardness, lack of finish and uncertainty of proportions. The 
change to the perfect manner was caused by the discovery of ancient 
marbles. 

‘‘After them [the predecessors of Leonardo], their successors were 
able to attain to it through seeing excavated out of the earth certain 
antiquities cited by Pliny as amongst the most famous, such as the 
- Laocoon, the Hercules, the Great Torso of the Belvedere, and likewise 
the Venus, the Cleopatra, the Apollo, and an endless number of others, 
which, both with their sweetness and their severity, with their fleshy 
roundness copied from the greatest beauties of nature, and with certain 
attitudes which involve no distortion of the whole figure but only a 
movement of certain parts, which are revealed with a most perfect 
grace, brought about the disappearance of a certain dryness, hardness, 
and sharpness of manner... 

[He mentions the contemporary admiration of such precursors as 
Francia and Perugino. | 

“But their error was afterwards clearly proved by the works of Leon- 
ardo da Vinci, who, giving a beginning to that third manner which we 
propose to call the modern — besides the force and boldness of his draw- 
ing, and the extreme subtlety wherewith he counterfeited all the minute- 
nesses of nature exactly as they are— with good rule, better order, right 
proportion, perfect drawing, and divine grace, abounding in resources 
and having a most profound knowledge of art, may be truly said to have 
endowed his figures with motion and breath. 

“There followed after him, although at some distance, Giorgione da 
Castelfranco, who obtained a beautiful gradation of colour in his pic- 
tures . . .; and not inferior to him in giving force, relief, sweetness, and 


THE GOLDEN AGE 317 


grace to his pictures, with his colouring, was Fra Bartolommeo di San 
Marco. But more than all did the most gracious Rafaello da Urbino, 
who, studying the labours of the old masters and those of the Moderns, 
took the best from them, and, having gathered it together, enriched the 
art of painting with that complete perfection which was shown in an- 
cient times by the figures of Apelles and Zeuxis, nay, even more, if we 
may make bold to say it, as might be proved if we could compare their 
works with his. Wherefore nature was left vanquished by his 
colours.... 


“In the same manner, but sweeter in colouring and not so bold, there 
followed Andrea del Sarto, who may be called a rare painter, for his 
works are free from errours. 

“But he who bears the palm from both the living and the dead, tran- 
scending and eclipsing all others, is the divine Michelangelo Buonarotti, 
who holds the sovereignty not merely of one of these arts, but of all 
three together. This master surpasses and excels not only all those 
moderns who have almost vanquished nature, but even those most 
famous ancients who without a doubt did so gloriously surpass 
her; and in his own self he triumphs over moderns, ancients, 
and nature, who could scarcely conceive anything so strange 
and so difficult that he would not be able, by the force of his most divine 
intellect and by means of his industry, draughtsmanship, art, judg- 
ment and grace, to excel it by a great measure; and that not only in 
painting and in the use of colours under which title are comprised all 
forms, and all bodies upright or not upright, palpable or impalpable, 
visible or invisible, but also in the highest perfection of bodies in the 
round, with the point of his chisel.” 


UNITY OF DESIGN IN THE RENAISSANCE 


The humanist Benedetto Varchi, renewing the debate which Leon- 
ardo da Vinci had started concerning the relative rank of sculpture and 
painting, sent the text of his lecture to Michelangelo and asked for his 
opinion. The sculptor writes in 1540: 


“In my opinion painting should be considered excellent in propor- 
tion as it approaches the effect of relief, while relief should be considered 
bad as it approaches the effect of painting. I used to consider that. 
sculpture was the lantern of painting and that between the two things 
there was the same difference as that between the sun and the moon. 


318 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


But now that I have read your book, in which, speaking as a philosopher, 
you say that things which have the same end are themselves the same, 
I have changed my opinion; and I now consider that painting and sculp- 
ture are one and the same thing, unless greater nobility be imparted 
by the necessity for a keener judgment, greater difficulties of execution, 
stricter limitations and harder work. And if this be the case, no painter 
ought to think less of sculpture than of painting and no sculptor less of 
painting than of sculpture. By sculpture I mean the sort that is exe- 
cuted by cutting away from the block: the sort that is executed by 
building up resembles painting. That is enough, for as one and the other, 
that is to say, both painting and sculpture proceed from the same faculty, 
it would be an easy matter to establish harmony between them and to 
let such disputes alone, for they occupy more time than the execution 
of the figures themselves. As to that man [Leonardo da Vinci] who 
wrote saying that painting was more noble than sculpture, as though he 
knew as much about it as he did of the other subjects on which he has 
written, why my serving-maid would have written better!” 


From Robert W. Carden, Michelangelo, a Record of his Life, Boston 
and New York, 1913, a book which from Michelangelo’s letters gives 
a very intimate view of the sculptor’s character. 


SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS ON THE GRAND STYLE 


No critic of art has better expressed the ideal of the Grand Style than 
Sir Joshua Reynolds. I quote from the third of his Discourses, in the 
admirable edition of Roger E. Fry, New York, 1906. pp. 51 ff. 

“Every language has adopted terms expressive of this excellence. 
The gusto grande of the Italians, the beau idéal of the French and the 
great style, genius and taste among the English, are but different appella- 
tions of the same thing. It is this intellectual dignity, they say, that 
ennobles the Painter’s Art; that lays the line between him and the 
mere mechanic: and produces those great effects in an instant, which 
eloquence and poetry, by slow and repeated efforts, are scarcely able 
to retain.” . . . [The grand style is seen to rest upon a sort of generali- 
zing tendency.] “The whole beauty and grandeur of the Art consists, 
in my opinion, in being able to get above all singular forms, local cus- 
toms, particularities and details of every kind.” [The artist] ‘‘ being 
enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excrescences, and 
deformities of things, from their general figures, he makes out an ab- 
stract idea of their forms more perfect than any one original; and, what 


THE GOLDEN AGE 319 


may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally by drawing his figures 
unlike to any one object.” [Sir Joshua advocates the study of the an- 
tique, not to imitate any single work, but to master the principle that 
underlies them all.] ‘‘Beauty and simplicity have so great a share in 
the composition of the great style, that he who has acquired them has 
little else to learn. It must not, indeed, be forgotten that there is a 
nobleness of conception, which goes beyond any thing in the mere ex- 
hibition of perfect form; there is an art of animating and dignifying the 
figures with intellectual grandeur, of impressing the appearance of 
philosophic wisdom, or heroic virtue. This can only be acquired by 
him that enlarges the sphere of his understanding by a variety of knowl- 
edge, and warms his imagination with the best productions of ancient 
and modern poetry.” 


KENYON Cox ON THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 


The ideals of the High Renaissance are eloquently, if incidentally, 
defined by the late Kenyon Cox in The Classic Point of View, New York, 
IQII. pp. 3-5. 

“The Classic spirit is the disinterested search for perfection; it is 
the love of clearness and reasonableness and self-control; it is, above 
all, the love of permanence and of continuity. It asks of a work of art, 
not that it shall be novel or effective, but that it shall be fine and noble. 
It seeks not merely to express individuality or emotion, but to express 
disciplined emotion and individuality restrained by law. It strives for 
the essential rather than the accidental, the eternal rather than the mo- 
mentary — loves impersonality more than personality, and feels more 
power in the orderly succession of the hours and the seasons than in the 
violence of earthquake or of storm. And it loves to steep itself in tra- 
dition. It would have each new work connect itself in the mind of him 
who sees it with all the noble and lively works of the past, bringing 
them to his memory and making their beauty and charm a part of the 
beauty and charm of the work before him. It does not deny originality 
and individuality — they are as welcome as inevitable. It does not 
consider tradition as immutable or set rigid bounds to invention. But 
it desires that each new presentation of truth and beauty shall show us 
the old truth and the old beauty, seen only from a different angle and 
colored by a different medium. It wishes to add link by link to the chain 
of tradition, but it does not wish to break the chain.” 


320 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


THE END OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE COMING OF FEAR 


An artistic collapse whether in an artist or a nation is usually due to 
a prior collapse in morale. Florence suffered such loss of face when the 
Imperialists stormed the city and crushed the Republic. We may study 
the disaster in Michelangelo’s personal case and in its effect on the citi- 
zenry at large. Michelangelo was military engineer. Writing from Venice, 
Sept. 25, 1529, he describes his desertion with singular objectivity: 

“T had intended to remain in Florence to the end of the war, having 
no fears for my own safety. But on Tuesday morning, the 21st of Sep- 
tember, a certain person came out by the Porta a San Nicol6 while I 
was engaged in inspecting the bastions, and whispered in my ear that I 
must remain there no longer if I valued my life. He accompanied me to 
my house, dined there, brought me horses, and never left my side until 
he had carried me out of Florence, declaring that it was for my good that 
he so acted. Whether it were God or the devil I cannot say.” 

From Robert W. Carden, Michelangelo, a Record of his Life, Boston 
and New York, 1913, p. 168. 

Florence suffered not from hallucinations, as this seems to have been, 
but from the humiliation and confusion incident upon defeat and foreign 
occupation. I translate from Benedetto Varchi’s Storia, the extract in 
Ancona and Bacci’s Manuele della Letteratura Italiana, Vol. II, p. 506. 


“The city of Florence when her liberty was lost was full of such 
sorrow, of such terror, of such confusion, that it can hardly be described 
or even imagined. . . . The nobles were indignant among themselves 
and inwardly resented being scorned and vilified by the lowest classes; 
the plebeians in extreme need, would not refrain at least from relieving 
their minds about the nobility; the rich, how they could manage not to 
lose their property; the poor, day and night, what they should do not 
to die utterly and of famine; the citizens were dismayed and desperate, 
because they had spent and lost a lot: the peasants, much more, because 
there remained for them nothing at all; the priests were ashamed of 
having deceived the laity; the laity grieved at having believed the 
priests; men had become extraordinarily suspicious and covetous; 
women immeasurably incredulous and distrustful: finally, every one 
with lowered face and staring eyes, seemed beside himself, and all with- 
out exception pallid and bewildered feared at all times every sort of ill.” 

From such a shell-shocked community as this, no serene or noble 
art was to be expected. It was much that Florence in bondage still 
could nurture the exquisitely morbid art of a Pontormo and the aris- 
tocratic detachment and finesse of a Bronzing, 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 


Fic. 207. Giovanni Bellini. St. Francis receiving the Stigmata. 
— H.C. Frick Coll., New York. 


322 


Cuapter VII 
VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 


On the splendor of Venice — Italo-Byzantine painters of the 14th Century — 
Paduan, Veronese, and Umbrian Painters at Venice — Jacopo Bellini — 
Squarcione’s school at Padua, Carlo Crivelli — Andrea Mantegna, mentor 
for Northern Italy — Antonello da Messina’s Realism — The flowering 
cf the old Narrative School in Gentile Bellino — Giovanni Bellini — The 
backward Vivarini — Carpaccio and the end of the old Narrative Style — 
Literary background of Giorgione’s Art — Giorgione of Castelfranco. 


When, about the middle of the fifth century, a pitiful throng 
of refugees sought safety from Attila and his Huns in the fens 
at the head of the Adriatic, they took with them what was 
left of the constructive genius of the Roman Empire. They 
raised amid the lagoons a healthful and convenient city, which 
in the course of centuries became the most beautiful in Europe. 
They developed a strong and wise oligarchy, under forms sufh- 
ciently democratic to satisfy the people. They attained an 
extraordinary capacity for diplomacy and overseas trade — 
a brilliant commercialized civilization. Secure in their isola- 
tion and wealth, the Venetians mediated the long strife be- 
tween the popes and the Teutonic emperors, making favorable 
terms with both. Venice enjoyed a wholly exceptional political 
stability. No other commune of Europe could have fittingly 
assumed the title, Serenissima. Her galleys and sailing craft 
plied to Candia, Rhodes, Smyrna, Alexandretta, Constanti- 
nople. Down the Adriatic to Malta, her trading stations shone 
white under the yellow cliffs. Her incoming ships brought back 
the splendid rugs and silks and embroideries from the Levant, 
the beautiful potteries of Asia Minor, Persia and distant China, 
the veined marbles and porphyries of Egypt and of Istria to 

323 


324 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


build into her churches and palaces. She was astute and power- 
ful enough to divert a crusade into a plundering expedition 
against her rival, Constantinople. And thus she got the four 
antique bronze horses still chafing above the portico of St. 
Mark’s and many a relic of the later Byzantine splendor. 
Her doors ever opened to the Orient. Her quays swarmed with 
turbaned traders. The Greeks had their churches and con- 
fraternities at Venice, and so had the Slavonians. For articles 
of luxury the northern caravans came to Venice over the 
Brenner to load from the German warehouses on the Grand 
Canal. 

So stable, rich and proud a city was singularly slow in pro- 
ducing its own art. Venice was never primarily a manufac- 
turing community, and from the first she expected to import 
most articles of luxury and display. Thus when the many- 
domed Basilica rose over the body of her patron, St. Mark, 
Venice called masters from Constantinople to enrich the sur- 
faces with mosaics, and when, towards the end of the fourteenth 
century, she wished to picture the new Palace of the Doges, she 
called not her own artists to the task, but those of Padua, 
Verona and distant Fabriano. Her originality and greatness 
in painting do not clearly assert themselves until about 1475 
in the work of the brothers Bellini, and by 1577, the year 
of Titian’s death, the period of her artistic supremacy has 
passed. The whole development is comprised within a century; 
its acceleration is even more remarkable than the tardiness 
of its appearance. In three generations Venetian painting made 
the progress that had required six in Tuscany, and the whole 
preparatory period, which in Florence stretched over a century 
and three quarters, is included in the single life of such a master 
as Giovanni Bellini. 

This means that Venetian painting followed simpler and more 
unperturbed ideals than that of Florence. The composure, 
complacency, and self-centered quality of the Venetians was 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 325 


a source of strength to their artists and as well a limitation. 
The city stuck closely to its chief business of gaining greatly 
in order to live magnificently. And unlike Florence, Venice 
interprets magnificence in the most material terms, in terms 
of velvet and veined marbles, fair skins and lustrous hair, in 
feasting and measured revelry, grave and gentle manners, 
colorful pageantry in honor of God, his saints and the Serenis- 
sima Republica. You will not find poets, scholars, scientists 
a-plenty at Venice. Her painters have no tendency to be also 
architects, sculptors, mathematicians, theorists in zsthetics; 
they stick placidly to the main business of painting. And per- 
haps just because the Venetian painter refused to be diverted 
from the problems proper to his craft, his progress was so rapid 
and assured, and the Venetian school, simply as painting, the 
most beautiful school of painting the world has ever seen. 

It was written in the lagoon itself that Venetian painting 
should be a school of color. Long before the marble and 
porphyry palaces and the shining bridges of Renaissance Venice 
spanned the canals, the brown water gave its satiny reflections 
of rude hut, coppered galley, tawny sail, and, in days of com- 
plete calm, of the serrated ivory of the Julian Alps or the vel- 
vety azure of the Euganean Hills. As the city grew palatially, 
the marble and gold of the palace fronts, and spires and domes, 
with the buff and red of soaring bell towers, further enriched 
the shimmering of the lagoon. Its waters were ruffled not 
merely by winds blending and effacing the weaving of bor- 
rowed colors, but also by the passing of gilded processional 
barges with rhythmical oars celebrating the Assumption of 
the Virgin or the marriage of Venice to the Adriatic. 

Ashore the splendor was hardly less. Along the balustrades 
of innumerable little bridges, the rose or yellow marble got 
an ineffable finish from the touch of countless hands. Dusky 
archways gave upon courts encrusted with variegated marbles, 
porphyry and mosaics. In the gloomy streets, gay pictorial 


326 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


frescoes enlivened the fronts of the less pretentious houses. 
In the great Piazza of St. Mark and other open spaces, often 
passed in solemn procession the religious confraternities called 
Schools, the members garbed with a splendor rare even in the 
Renaissance. There were clubs 
of young fops, not yet broken to 
the paternal commerce, who 
gave themselves to the invention 
and display of the finest tailoring 
and haberdashery. And the 
unorganized kindred activities of 
the women of all ages were as 
effective from the point of view 
of social display. Such was the 
spectacle that Venice offered the 
painter for record and even more 


for inspiration. And the great- 
Fic. 208. Presentation; Flight to 
Egypt; Miracle at Cana; Temp-  ~ ; : 
tation. From an Italo-Byzan- in their capacity to lend to this 
tine Altar-front of about 1350. 3 A : 
eer sie chiefly material splendor their 
own kind of ideality. 
When Venetian painting about the year 1350 made its first 
timid assertions of originality, the leading influence was that 


of the late Byzantine artists of the Slavonian coast and the 


ness of the Venetian painters lay 


Ionian Islands. We see their narrative painting assuming a 
very slightly Italian guise in the composite altar-front preserved 
in the museum of Trieste. Figure 208. Its date cannot be 
very late in the fourteenth century, and the stereotyped 
religious compositions represent models vividly before the 
Venetian painter up to the Renaissance. Such Venetian mas- 
ters as Paolo, active from 1332 to 1358, and Lorenzo, whose — 
work falls a generation later, make slight and external im- 
provements on the Byzantine manner.' They reject its more 
rigid formulas—the gold web over drapery, the multiplied 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 327 


small folds, the painfully schematized muscles. They add on 
their own account radiant blond coloring, splendid brocades, 
more gorgeous fashions of gilding, and a new type of architec- 
tural arrangement. ‘The elaborate altar-backs with perforated 
pilasters, and flamboyant arches and cresting; with full- 
length figures below and half-length of like scale above, be- 
come the standard form of Venetic ancona about 1350 and 
remains so for nearly a century and a half. We may see the 
form, with the upper central panel modernized, in Lorenzo’s 
Annunciation of 1357, in the Venetian Academy. The effect 
depends largely on the frame-maker. Such altar-pieces are 
made more thoughtfully by Caterino and Donato and indeed 
persist in all Northern Italy until after 1450. Figure art. 
We may study a similar type of ancona with narratives 
instead of single figures in the very accomplished and color- 
ful work doubtfully ascribed to Nicolo Semitecolo, towards 
the beginning of the new century. Though the narratives 
follow pretty closely the old Byzantine requirements, the 
whole surface shows the flower-bed variety and harmony of 
color which is proper to Venice. Such work, as a blend of By- 
zantine and Gothic features, repeats what Siena had effected 
with far greater originality and finesse about seventy years 
earlier under Duccio and Simone Martini. Modena and Bo- 
logna and Padua through the latter half of the fourteenth cen- 
tury share this development, but again on a basis of rather 
marked inferiority to Siena. 

The Venetian authorities were fully conscious of the back- 
wardness of their own artists. When the Ducal Palace was 
finished in 1365, they called to fresco its great hall not any of 
the various local followers of Paolo and Lorenzo, but Guariento 
from neighboring Padua. He executed the great Coronation of 
the Virgin which was later damaged by fire and covered by 
Tintoretto’s Paradise. The temporary removal of Tintoretto’s 
canvas showed for a time the crumbling remains of Guariento’s 


328 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


fresco. It isin an elaborate Gothic-Byzantine style and abounds 
in incidental architectural ornament. Below the ceremony of 
the Coronation there is a screen of pierced marble niches occu- 
pied by graceful angels. It is a motive that will often recur in 
the new century. On the whole Guariento brings little new 
to Venice, but he does demonstrate the decorative possibilities 
of the local style. His influence was restricted because the 
Venetians soon ceased to work in fresco. 

The impetus necessary to lift Venetian painting out of its 
routine condition was supplied in the fifteenth century by 
Gentile da Fabriano and Pisanello. Gentile, who worked in 
the Ducal Palace about 1410, commanded both the exquisite- 
ness of the Sienese style and its narrative breadth. Unhappily 
his Venetian frescoes which are lauded in contemporary accounts 
have perished. His sweetness and ideality are attested by 
various Madonnas. We may infer his raciness and vivacity 
as a narrative painter from the predella of his master work, 
the Adoration of the Kings (1423). The little panel of the Pre- 
sentation in the Temple is admirable for its architectural in- 
scenation and for the actuality of its incidental figures. We 
have a man whose eye takes in the look of things. This is 
even more the case with Pisanello (1397-1455), who worked 
a little later in the same hall. He has severe notions of 
draughtsmanship, as befitted the greatest of all medallists. 
He brought from Verona, where his artistic ideas were formed, 
the ideal of elaborate and credible setting, especially as regards 
the relations of figures to architecture. In his ruined fresco 
of St. George of Verona, Figure 209, we may catch his quality. 
But the Veronese style is really better represented by such im- 
mediate predecessors as Avanzo and Altichiero. Jointly about 
1385 they frescoed the great Oratorio of St. George at Padua. 
Especially remarkable are the legends of the titular saint, 
Figure 210. Through repainting one may still discern the 
dignity and discretion of the arrangement, and in particular 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 329 


Fic. 210. Altichiero of Verona. St. George baptizes the 
Family of the Princess. Fresco. — Oratory of St. George, 
Padua. 


Fic. 209. Pisanello. St. George meets the Princess. Fresco. — Sant?’ 
Anastasia, Verona. 


330 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the just and tasteful elaboration of contemporary architectural 
features. Florentine and Sienese frescoes of the time are hardly 
as accomplished. The festal value of the architecture persists 
as a leading ideal of the school of Verona down to her greatest 
master, Paolo Veronese, and the ideal was taken up with 
conviction at Venice —became indeed the distinctive feature 
of her narrative school. 

Jacopo Bellini,? the first great painter whom Venice herself 
developed, was the pupil of Gentile da Fabriano and also pro- 
foundly influenced by the Veronese. Thus he combines in 
himself the two main strains of early Venetian painting — 
its desire for sweetness and its desire for vivacity and elabo- 
rate truthfulness in narrative. Alongside of Jacopo Bellini 
worked the faithful imitators of Paolo, Lorenzo, and Guariento. 
Such artists as Jacobello del Fiore and Michele Giambono, while 
often inherently attractive, are of small importance. Their 
contemporary, Antonio Vivarini, though in most ways less 
sensitively the artist, prepared the way for the conservative 
school of Murano. Antonio’s quality is somewhat obscured 
by his habit of working with a German. partner, Giovanni. 
Yet the part of Antonio, as represented by his altar-piece in 
the Vatican, dated 1464, Figure 211, seems to have been merely 
to build cautiously on the work of Guariento and Lorenzo. 
His nephew, Alvise, and his younger brother, Bartolommeo, 
become influential figures towards the end of the century. 

The hope of the future rested with that far more searching 
spirit, Jacopo Bellini. He gave to art not merely his own 
indefatigable curiosity but two sons of genius, Gentile and Gio- 
vanni. All the leading tendencies of the Early Renaissance 
in Venice originate with this remarkable family. We first meet 
Jacopo Bellini in 1424 as an assistant of Gentile da Fabriano 
and he worked on till 1470. The great decorative canvases 
which he made for the Ducal Palace, and for the Schools of 
St. Mark and St. John the Evangelist have perished, while 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 331 


the few pictures remaining from his brush are mostly of late 
date and inadequately express his ambitions. His Madonnas 


Fic. 211, Antonio Vivarini. St. Antony (polychromed wood statue) 
and Saints. 1464. —Vatican Gallery, Rome. 


at the Uffizi, Venice, Paris, and Milan retain the exquisite 
sweetness of his master’s vein. Their modest grace may be 
felt in the little Madonna, Figure 212, at Venice. Of admira- 
ble gentleness and spirit is the ornate Annunciation painted 
in 1444, in Sant’ Alessandro at Brescia. Its predella panels, 


332 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


although probably of student execution, show how definitely 
his narrative compositions derive from Altichiero and the 
Veronese. 

But we get the full stature of 
the man, not from the minor 
paintings which chance _ has 
spared, but from the two extra- 
ordinary sketch books respec- 
tively in the Louvre and the 
National Gallery. Here we trace 
his day by day exercises. Per- 
spective is his constant concern. 
He piles up elaborate architec- 
ture with an extravagance which 


even his Veronese exemplars 


: never ventured. The subject 
Fic. 212. Jacopo Bellini. Ma- matter gets lost in the setting. 
donna. — Venice. pt 
The Annunciation becomes a 
mere episode in an architectural extravaganza. So does the 
Feast of Herod, Figure 213. The buildings generally are of 
ornate Early Renaissance type. He loves to adorn them with 
swags and statues and low reliefs. Sometimes he sketches 
actual Roman sculptures and coins, medallions, and inscrip- 
tions. He makes strange, stern backgrounds for his outdoor 
scenes, with twisted stratified mountains and stately distant 
cities. He loves wild beasts; draws capital horses for St. 
George or for Perseus. He is a bit of a humanist, doing bac- 
chanals, with mischievous satyrs. ‘There are a few fine por- 
traits and designs for Madonnas. ‘Thus these sketches with 
the silver point and quill pen anticipate every mode of the 
next generation—the narrative style, the altar-piece, the 
pastoral mythology. One feels in the sketch books a nature 
rather alert and curious than thorough—a certain lack of 
concentration and real seriousness. But the sketches evince 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 333 


an inexhaustible fancy, and if they are ever published cheaply, 
they should rival in popularity the most loved picture-books 
of fairyland. Jacopo was not only a versatile but a travelled 
artist. Active for a time at the brilliant court of Lionello 


Fic. 213. Jacopo Bellini. The Feast of Herod (in upper right loggia). 
— From the Paris Sketch Book. 


d’Este at Ferrara, he had also visited Florence and probably 
Rome. But his most important move as regards the history 
of art, was to Padua, about 1453. There the whole course of 
Venetian painting was shaped by the apparently casual fact 
that an austere young painter named Andrea Mantegna fell in 
love with Jacopo’s daughter, Niccolosia, and married her. 
Through that alliance, the most formidable of brothers-in-law 
became the artistic mentor of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. 
For a moment, indeed, Padua and Mantegna quite efface 
Venice in interest. For ten years before this lucky marriage, 
Padua had been the scene of intense artistic activity. Dona- 
tello, the most powerful realist sculptor of Florence, was at 
work on the bronze reliefs for the altar of Sant’ Antonio, and 
on the Gattamelata statue. He gave young Mantegna a 


334 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


strong impulse in the direction of constructive realism. Such 
Florentine realists as Paolo Uccello and Fra Filippo Lippi 
were also transient visitors at this time. And Padua, ever an 
academic city, saw the first systematic art school started by 
a shrewd and able master, Francesco Squarcione. Squarcione 
collected Roman marbles and bronzes, concerned himself with 
the new mysteries of perspective, foreshortening and precise 
anatomy. He made his students acquire a line with the re- 
siliency of bronze. He made them copy minutely veined 
marbles and sculptured reliefs. He insisted that every picture 
should have garlands of laurel mixed with vegetables and fruits. 
The whole surface had to be brought to the lustrous surface of 
an enamel. Severe teaching usually attracts good pupils. 
So it was in Squarcione’s case; he had scores of pupils from all 
of the Venetic region and even from Dalmatia beyond the 
Adriatic. He was too sensible to paint much himself; it 
didn’t pay so successful a teacher. So the few pictures ascribed 
to him are either of small importance or of dubious authen- 
ticity. But his stamp is on all his pupils. What his teaching 
meant may be grasped in early Mantegna and even better in a 
painter who never emancipated himself — Carlo Crivelli, of 
Venice, “‘Eques Aureatus.”’ 

Crivelli’s? fame was great but provincial. Originally most 
of his altar-pieces adorned churches of the Adriatic Marches. 
Dozens have passed thence to the museums of Europe and 
America. One and all they seem less painted things than the 
most splendid of mineral productions. It is incredible that 
mere brush and paint can achieve so tense a line and such 
jewellike surfaces. Entirely typical is an early Madonna, at 
Verona, Figure 214. The great ancona of 1476 in the 
National Gallery shows him faithful to the arrangements of 
the early Venetians. The Annunciation, in the same gallery, 
painted ten years later, reveals him affected by the narrative 
tradition of Jacopo Bellini. In America fine Pietas at Boston, 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 335 


Figure 215, New York, and in the Johnson Collection, Phila- 
delphia, exemplify his rectitude and energy. While Mrs. 
Gardner’s St. George and the Dragon, as the most fastidious 


Fic. 214. Carlo Crivelli. Madonna. 
Angels bearing Symbols of the 
Passion. — Verona. Fic. 215. Carlo Crivelli. Piet&. 

— Boston. 


of fairy tales, consoles us for the absence of this subject among 
the few pictures of Jacopo Bellini. From his beginnings about 
1460 to his death in 1493, Carlo Crivelli remained true to his 
early teaching. Whoever understands his works has little 
need to consult further the entirely similar achievement of 
such great Ferrarese painters as Marco Zoppo (1440 ca.-1498) 
and Cosimo Tura (1430 ca.-1495). The influence of Squarcione 
passed to the conservative painters at Venice, and influenced the 
entire Murano school. We have a resplendent masterpiece of 
this sort in the single known work of Antonio da Negroponte, 
Figure 216, in San Francesco della Vigna, at Venice. It com- 
bines with its evident Squarcionesque features, the mag- 


Fra Antonio da Negroponte. Madonna.—S. Francesco 
della Vigna. 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 337 


nificence of the old Gothic-Byzantine style, and much of 
the sweetness of Jacopo Bellini. Its date is about 1450, and the 
picture is an excellent point of departure for our understanding 
of the radical reform that came 
into Venice and all Lombardy 
with the activity of Andrea 
Mantegna. 

Born in 1431 at Vicenza, we 
find Mantegna‘ enrolled at the 
tender age of thirteen in the 
painters guild at Padua. He is 
described as an adoptive son 
of Squarcione. Mantegna was 
scarcely twenty-four when he 


engaged with other fellow pupils 


to decorate a chapel in the Fic. 217. Mantegna. St. James 
Church of the Eremitani, the peo Se Cubiones girescoa 


Ermitam, Padua. 

subject being the legends of St. 
James and St. Christopher. In the six panels assigned to 
Mantegna, his quality and superiority are already manifest. 
His style is severely archzological and Roman. He endeavors 
honestly to reconstruct the times of the apostles. But his 
method is more severe than that of the Romans themselves. 
The line moves with the slow authority of an engraved con- 
tour. The relief is dry and harsh. There is little sense of 
difference between living forms and sculptured figures. The 
landscape is built in spiral strata as if worked out of metal. 
Here transpires clearly the influence of Jacopo Bellini, which 
is as evident also in the ornate architectural settings. The 
colors are at once dull and garish, the textures scrupulously 
studied after Squarcione’s precepts. A most strenuous art 
this, and with all its pedantry full of power and dignity. 

Certain innovations in perspective should be noted. In the 
fresco, St. James led to Execution, Figure 217, Mantegna 


338 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


avoids the usual conventional perspective, which tilts the pic- 
ture towards the spectator; and treats the group as if it were 
on an actual stage set at the height of the fresco. Thus no 
ground is seen; the projecting floor cuts off the feet of the fig- 


Fic. 218. Andrea Mantegna. Madonna with Saints. — San Zeno, 
Verona. 


ures; and all vanishing points are precisely set at the level of 
the spectator’s eye below. The aim is to create illusion. 
Before the completion of the Eremitani frescoes, Mantegna 
had married Niccolosia Bellini, had profited largely by her 
father’s advice, and had influenced strongly her two brothers, 
Gentile and Giovanni. They seem to have been the first 
eager pupils of the man who was soon to be the artistic school- 
master for all Northern Italy. . Two years after his marriage, 
in 1455, Mantegna liberated himself from legal bondage to 
Squarcione, and soon after began the masterpiece of his de- 
veloped Renaissance style, the altar-back for San Zeno Mag- 
giore at Verona, Figure 218. It was finished in 1459, the 
artist being twenty-eight years old. It is a little over-rich, 
finished throughout like a miniature, and very stately. In 
arrangement it obeys the artist’s new law of illusion. The 
base of the picture is precisely at the level of the eye, so no 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 339 


floor is seen. The carved classical frame is regarded as the 
front of an attual pavillion which is continued in paint. With- 
out the frame, the architectural perspective of the picture 
would not explain itself, and if the picture were set higher 
or lower all the perspective relations would be wrong. At 
Siena, a century and more earlier, the Lorenzetti had devised 
this motive of an open box of which the frame is the plastic front. 
Mantegna made this sort of illusionism standard for Venice 
and all Northern Italy. Its value is open to question, but 
I believe that the monumental altar-pieces of Mantegna and- 
Giovanni Bellini gain something in gravity and stability from 
this careful adjustment of the perspective to the actual posi- 
tion of the spectator. At any rate it was the rigid logic and 
probity of Mantegna that gave to Venetian art precisely 
the tonic stimulus it needed. 

By thirty he was famous, and yielding to repeated per- 
suasion, he left Padua for Mantua and the court of the most 
generous art patrons of the moment, the Gonzagas. His 
most notable work for them was the decoration of the Camera 
degli Sposi, 1474, in their great palace, and the canvases of 
the triumphs of Cesar, 1481 to 1494, which, sadly damaged and 
repainted, are now seen at Hampton Court. The two series 
represent strikingly the dual and never completely harmonized 
strains in Mantegna’s genius— realism and archaism. He 
was never more the realist than in the room decorated in honor 
of the marriage of Lodovico Gonzaga and Barbara of Branden- 
burg, the Camera degli Sposi. The motives are wholly novel 
—no religious subjects, nothing mythological, just the Gonzaga 
family and their courtiers, sitting in conversation, meeting 
ceremoniously, or preparing for the hunt. Nowhere before had 
such a consistent use of the principle of illusionism been made, 
not even in Roman mural painting of the Antonine age. Man- 
tegna has completely painted away the real walls of the room, 
and has replaced the real architecture by a simulated classi- 


340 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


cal pavillion, with arcades looking out to the country side and 
a round opening above. All the figures are out of doors. To 
see the scheme properly you must stand precisely in the centre 
of the room and turn on your heel. The arrangement in short 


Sz < 


Fic. 219. Mantegna. Detail of Ceiling. — Camera degli Sposi, Mantua. 


is periscopic. As you look up you will see a balcony with 
cupids, Figure 219, standing on the outside ledge and maids 
of honor and peacocks looking down over the balustrade. 
You see everything feet foremost as if it were actually there. 
Then you look out through the arcades where the view of out- 
side doings is sometimes interrupted by a curtain. Generally 
it is drawn aside that you may see these great folk at ease out- 
side their pleasure house, Figure 220. The portraits are of 
utmost dignity and authority. In dealing with real people 
Mantegna’s style is less pinched than in his classical decora- 
tions. If I have insisted on the point of illusionism, it is only 
because the audacious logic of Correggio and a host of baroque 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 341 


followers for a century and more really grows out of this scheme 
at Mantua. You will see the open well with figures outside 
the parapet in Correggio’s dome at Parma, and the figures 
outside the painted roof in the Convent of San Paolo. In- 


Fic. 220. Mantegna. Portraits of the Gonzaga Family. Fresco. — 
Camera degli Spost, Mantua. 


deed, you have only to let the clouds come down through 
such open roofs and seat decorative figures on the clouds to 
arrive at the fully developed baroque style. And it is odd 
enough that its most romantic extravagances are clearly de- 
ducible from this rather sober and pedantic illusionism of 
Andrea Mantegna. 

Of the painted cloths representing the Triumphs of Cesar, 
Figure 221, (1484-1492), nine remain in debased condition at 
Hampton Court, England. Here the classicism of Mantegna 
finds its most legitimate expression. The designs are better 
seen in the engravings of his school and in the later woodcut 
copies by Andreini. 


342 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Despite such great commissions, Mantegna lived in some- 
thing near poverty. He could never resist a beautiful antique, 
and he was proud and difficult in his relations to exacting 
patrons. His style after his Roman visit of 1488 to 1490 loses 


Fic. 221. Mantegna. Triumph of Caesar. — Hampton Court, England. 


something of its tension and develops breadth. Perhaps the 
most impressive picture of this time is the Madonna of Victory, 
Figure 222, in the Louvre, which was painted in 1495 to cele- 
brate Gianfrancesco Gonzaga’s drawn battle with the French 
at Fornovo. Its severity is mollified by the graciousness of the 
evergreen bower in which the group is set and by the contrast- 
ing seriousness of St. Elizabeth and the kneeling donor. These 
figures forecast a mystical and tender quality in certain of 
the later Madonnas. 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 343 


In his last years Mantegna undertook an attractive but 
dificult task in decorating the study of the famous  blue- 
stocking, Isabella d’Este, wife of Gianfrancesco. With the 
pertinacity of a suffragette born 
out of due time, this great lady 
framed the most elaborate writ- 
ten programmes, upon the literal 
accomplishment of which she 
insisted. Her correspondence 
with such unfortunate protegés 
as Perugino and Lorenzo Costa 
is among the delightful eccen- 
tricities of Renaissance annals. 
The resultant decorations reflect 
the sophisticated and somewhat 
brittle grace of Isabella’s own 
personality. None are better 
than those of Mantegna which 
were done about the year 1500. 
His Parnassus, Figure 223, with 
its romantically picturesque gods 
and godesses, and its admirable ae ar Vice 
round of dancing muses, is the 
best that Northern Italy can show in comparison with Bot- 
ticelli’s mythologies, unless it be the companion-piece, Minerva 
expelling the Vices, Figure 224, which is wonderful alike in 
energy, inventiveness and grotesque humor, anticipating in 
its mood similar refinements in Spenser’s “‘ Faerie Queene” 
and Muilton’s ““Comus.” Mantegna in these works becomes 
the true precursor of that poetic pastoralism which in 
Giorgione soon dominates the Venetian scene. 

Mantegna lived on, none too well treated by the younger 
Gonzagas, until 1506. To relieve his poverty he offered for 
sale his most treasured marble, an Agrippina. He left in his 


344. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Fic. 223. Mantegna. Parnassus. — Louvre. 


Fic, 224. Mantegna. Minerva Expelling the Vices. — Louore. 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 345 


studio his most rigid and painful piece,— the Foreshortened 
Christ he called it. All his probity is in the picture. For 
Giovanni Bellini and others it served as the highest model of 
the tragic style, and it refutes the shallow views of such as 
find Mantegna merely academic and cold. He left many 
engravings and marvellous drawings in which perhaps better 
than in the paintings we may feel the exquisiteness of his 
austerely fastidious taste. Such a drawing as the Judith in 
the Ufhzi, Figure 225, is an epitome of all that Mantegna had 
to bequeath to the Renaissance. 

Well his contemporaries knew the value of his example. 
It rebuked the slackness of their own practice. Alongside 
the exquisitely modelled foot of his St. Sebastian in the Louvre, 
stands the severed marble foot from a Greek statue. As 
he ever measured his work against the antique, so the 
painters of Milan, Vicenza, Ferrara, Verona and Venice had 
to measure their work against his. And that simple act of 
honest comparison in a single generation furthered the art of 
Northern Italy to a degree that in Tuscany it had taken a 
century to attain. 

At the moment when Mantegna’s influence was at its height, 
it was happily modified in a realistic direction by the advent 
of Antonello da Messina.® Despite recent discoveries, the 
career of this great Sicilian realist remains obscure. Vasari 
imagined him a traveler in Flanders and a direct pupil of 
Jan van Eyck, whose invention of oil painting he was believed 
to have adopted. The legend is thoroughly discredited by newly 
discovered documents. Antonello came up in Sicily under the 
influence of visiting Spanish masters. From them he caught at 
second hand the point of view of Northern realism, from them 
he learned the advantages of the more fluid and lustrous oil 
vehicle. But he must also have seen and carefully studied 
fine paintings of the Flemish school. There were such in Sicily 
and at Naples. Antonello emerges about 1470 as the most 


Fic. 225. Andrea Mantegna. Judith. Wash Drawing. — Uffizi. 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 347 


energetic and truthful draughtsman of his time, and a por- 
traitist of powerful character equipped with a new and better 
technique. In 1475 he was in Venice and Lombardy. Such 


Fic. 226. — Antonello da Mes- 


ina. The Condottiere. — maze 
Te : paneer Fic. 227. Antonello da_ Mes- 


sina. St. Jerome in his Study. 
— London. 


portraits as the captain of mercenaries, I] Condottiere, Figure 
226, at the Louvre, immediately set the standard for the entire 
region. We no longer find flat profiles, but heads perfectly 
drawn in three-quarters aspect, modelled minutely, but with 
no loss of character and effect. No such eye as Antonello’s, 
unless it were that of Piero della Francesca, had as yet applied 
itself to the problems of painting. Whether in the nude, in 
his St. Sebastians and Crucifixions, or in his rare interiors, 
such as the St. Jerome in his Study, Figure 227, in the National 
Gallery, he announced new perfections in lighting, modelling 
and perspective. He painted for the Church of San Cassiano 
at Venice a stately and massive Madonna which led the local 
painters in the direction of mass and monumentality. Recent 
criticism has recognised the mutilated central panel in the 
Vienna gallery. Antonello’s work imposes itself primarily 
by its mere intensity of existence. It has no charm, and no 


348 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


especial emotion. Precisely this impersonality makes it an ad- 
mirable and safe model. Before his coming the Venetians had 
experimented with oil mediums, but they gladly adopted his lus- 
trous enamels, and strong shadows. He returned soon to his 
native Sicily, where he died in 1479, but his brief sojourn in 
the North had left its stamp. Montagna of Vicenza, Cima of 
Conegliano, Buonsignori of Verona, Alvise Vivarini of Venice 
are among his conscious emulators, and all the figure paint- 
ing of Venice assumes new gravity and authority. And we 
may mark his influence even in the leading masters of the new 
school, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. 

The tardy emergence of these two brothers of genius is 
one of the puzzles of the Venetian school. Neither makes 
any impression till he is in his forties, and their work has no 
directive influence till after 1480. The simplest explanation 
is that of Mr. Berenson. He suggests that the brothers loyally 
contented themselves with the position of partners in their 
father’s Dottega until his death in 1470. From that moment 
their progress is swift. Giovanni enlarges the style of the 
altar-piece in a Renaissance and monumental sense, and later 
moves gradually in a pastoral direction. Gentile brings to 
its perfection the complicated narrative style of his father. 
Both paint admirable portraits. Since Gentile is less an in- 
novator than a perfector of an established mode, we may well 
begin with him. 

Such early works as the organ shutters of St. Mark’s and 
the processional banner with the portrait of the Blessed 
Lorenzo Giustiniani, 1465, show that he based himself on 
Mantegna. His career, however, is associated with narrative 
mural paintings for the schools, in which work he developes 
a real originality. Whatever he painted in 1466 for the Great 
School of St. Mark was soon destroyed in a fire. It was pre- 
sumably the fame of these canvases that got him in 1469 the 
titles of knight and count palatine. In 1479, being fifty years 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 349 


old, he was called to Constantinople to serve that cruel volup- 
tuary, Sultan Mahomet II. Gentile’s portrait of him, now in 
the National Gallery, Figure 228, is an appalling piece of 


Fic. 228. Gentile Bellini. Sul- Fic. 229. Gentile Bellini. A Turk- 
tan Mahomet II. — London. ish Youth. Miniature — Mrs. 


Fobn L. Gardner, Boston. 
exact characterization. One feels the malignity of a character 
softened by vices, but retaining all mental lucidity and capaci- 
ties for both cruelty and calculated self-indulgence. A more 
amiable souvenir of this trip is the exquisite miniature por- 
trait of a young Moslem prince, Figure 229, which is at Fenway 
Court. Gentile brought back to Venice the new title of Pasha. 
We do not find him about his proper work until-1492, when he 
agrees to do “not for money but by superhuman inspiration” 
the new canvases necessitated by the fire in the Great School 
of St. Mark. 

The greatest of these is the view of the Piazza of St. Mark’s 
with the procession made by the School itself on Corpus 
Christi day, Figure 230. In the centre is their venerated 
relic of the True Cross. About it attention is fixed and almost 
military, relaxing gradually at the sides. There are hundreds 


350 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


of figures and scores of portraits in the picture, yet there is no 
smallness of presentation. Such eighteenth century town 
painters as Canale and his followers could hardly improve 
upon the truthfulness of the scene as regards light and air 


Fic. 230. Gentile Bellini. Corpus Christi Procession in Piazza of 
S. Marco. — Venice. 


even. Its value as record is immense. And, barring a certain — 
stiffness, its value as art is hardly less. 

Another panel from this series shows Gentile’s really great 
Capacity as an out-of-doors painter. It represents the miracu- 
lous recovery of the reliquary of the cross which had fallen 
into the canal. How perfectly the play of light over the 
encrusted and plastered palaces is felt, its shimmer upon 
the smooth water and through the moving crowds! In the 
essentials of plein-airisme we moderns have not so much 
surpassed this work. And if Gentile seems after all not quite 
a great artist, it is due to that impassivity which is proper to 
a luminist. With equal realism, Gentile’s imitator, Carpaccio, 
added sentiment, hence he is beloved and Gentile ignored. Yet 
early Venetian narrative painting is complete with Gentile, 
and from every consideration of naturalism it is immensely 
superior to anything produced at Florence in this period. It 
gains all the smaller points of representation with the most 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 351 


amazing ease, perhaps because it waives the greater issue of 
monumentality. It is well put together, but shows little selec- 
tion, is even at its best rather casually full of persons and things. 


Fic. 231. Giovanni Bellini. Pieta. — Milan. 


This produces, as compared with Florence, an odd reversal of 
conditions. The altar-piece, which in Florence is rather in- 
timate, is in Venice far the most monumental type of painting. 
We study the development of monumental design better in 
Giovanni Bellini’s altar-backs than in his brother’s narratives. 
To Gentile, at once a searching spirit in details and a con- 
servative on the whole, it must have been a great satisfaction 
to have perfected the narrative mode that his father had so 
brilliantly inaugurated. 

After 1500, being in the seventies and ailing, old Gentile 
acquired the ominous habit of frequently making and unmak- 
ing wills. His last one, which became effective in 1507, left 


352 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


to his vigorous brother, Giovanni, the precious paternal sketch- 
books and the heavy duty of finishing for St. Mark’s School 
the vast Canvas of St. Mark Preaching at Alexandria, which 


Fic. 232. Giovanni Bellini. Christ at Gethsemane. — London. 


is now at Milan. Giovanni was nearly eighty himself, but he 
put the great work through handsomely. 

Giovanni Bellini® was a natural son, but as was the humane 
Italian custom, taken into his father’s family. He was born 
about 1430, and his early efforts were completely dominated 
by Mantegna. Indeed he hardly finds himself artistically 
until he is fifty, and then he develops a most gracious capacity 
for growth which ceases only with his death at eighty-five. 
Of the score of pictures which are Mantegnesque in quality 
the earliest and most remarkable is the Pieta at Milan, Figure 
231. In the tragic power it outdoes Mantegna himself, and 
with all its hardness, it is more painter-like. The distribution 
of light and dark is broader, the expression more homely and 
genuine. Only a little later, perhaps towards 1470, is the 
Christ on the Mount of Olives, at London, Figure 232. With 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 353 


a very similar picture by Mantegna in the same gallery, it 
is based on a sketch of Jacopo Bellini’s. Although Giovanni 
frankly imitates the rigid folds of drapery and landscape from 
Mantegna, it is with a distinct 
difference. The mood is gentler, 
details are less obtrusive, there 
is an exquisite sense of evening 
sky, and of hills in gloom, and 
of the coming of: twilight over 
a tivereplain.. It is’ the first 
greatly felt landscape in Vene- 
tian painting, and though Gio- 
vanni was far to surpass it in 
fineness and accuracy, even he 
never excelled it in depth and 
truthfulness of feeling. The 
serenity of the eventide is the 
fitting foil to Our Lord’s single 


moment of human weakness.and_ F!¢. 233. Giovanni Bellini. Ma- 
donna. — Estate, Theodore Davts. 


despair. 

Giovanni's early Madonnas are singularly various. We 
have one very stately and tender in the estate of Theodore M. 
Davis, Figure 233. The Madonna in the John G. Johnson 
collection, Philadelphia, is wistful and emaciated. One belong- 
ing to Mr. Philip Lehman, New York, is of sensuous, peasant 
type, while the painting, unlike the soberness of the two 
earlier ones, shows the utmost resplendence of Mantegnesque 
enamels. Its date may be about 1470. So we see Giovanni 
wholly flexible and experimental at forty, and developing 
chiefly under Mantegna’s influence. i 

Giovanni’s emancipation from Mantegna takes place very 
gradually. It is virtually complete in the Transfiguration, 
Figure 234, at Naples which may be dated towards 1480. 
Bellini asserts himself fully in the gracious monumentality of 


354 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the chief group, while his Arcadian mood is forecast in the ample 
landscape softly invested with a colorful light and shade. 
There is a more specific emotion and a more romantic richness 
of setting in St. Francis receiving the Stigmata, Figure 207, 


Fic. 234. Giovanni Bellini. The Transfiguration. — Naples. 


Frick Collection, which may be a year or two later. These are 
both Wordsworthian pictures, imbued with a mystical tender- 
ness for natural appearances. Such are the sources from which 
Giorgione will soon draw his pagan pastoralism. 

Towards 1480 Giovanni Bellini’s work assumes monumental 
breadth, and withal a new sweetness. His Madonnas settle 
into what was to be the Venetian type—superb, mature forms 
at once queenly and maternal. Earlier there had been no 
Madonna type in his work but a singular variety of forms and 
faces. In generalizing the stately charm of Venetian mother- 
hood, Giovanni moves towards the grand style, and does so 
nearly twenty years sooner than the Florentines. His charac- 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 355 


teristic works are now great altar-pieces, with monumental dis- 
tribution of the figures within fine architectural spaces. Gener- 
ally the frame is a part of the pictorial organism, the plas- 
tic front of a pavilion. It is about the only survival of Man- 


Fic. 235. Giovanni Bellini. Madonna with Saints. — Frari, Venice. 


tegna’s practice in these solemn and gracious pictures. Un- 
luckily the first of the series perished in 1867 in the disastrous 
fire which robbed us also of Titian’s Death of St. Peter Martyr. 
But surviving copies of this altar-back for the Church of S. 
Giovanni e Paolo confirm the tradition that it was painted 
well before 1480. In its arrangement and details, especially 
in the tendency to crowd the many figures forward, it reveals 
to me the influence of Antonello da Messina’s great altar- 
piece for San Cassiano. It had apparently a somewhat rigid 


356 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


formality like that of the slightly earlier piece at Pesaro. 
Bellini is not yet quite at ease in his new and broader style, 
but he has at least glimpsed the ideal of monumentality and 
acquired a new technique, that 
of oil painting, in which to ex- 
press it. 

We find him full-grown in the 
noble Madonna of St. Job, Fig- 
ure 235a, made for the church of 
that name about 1484 and now 
in the Venice Academy. In this 
picture the new Venetian ideals 
of ardor and gravity unite har- 
moniously with the old ideal of 
material splendor. What play- 
ings of light and half-lights there 
are over mosaics, polished mar- 


—_’ 


Fic. 235a. Giovanni Bellini. Ma- 


donna of St. Job. — Venice. bles and carvings! How admir- 


ably the strict symmetry of the 
group is relieved by varying the postures of the six saints 
and by contrasting the sober garb of the monkish saints with 
the superb nudity of Saints Job and Sebastian and the shim- 
mering silks of the playing angels below. And the great 
picture, with all its monumentality, retains much of that old 
lyrical fire, which is gradually yielding to more sedate and 
reflective aims. 

We shall find the two great Madonnas of 1488, for the 
Frari, Figure 235, and for St. Peter’s at Murano, conceived 
more impassively. For the city church, Bellini insisted on 
hieratic effect and incidental splendors, reverting to the form 
of the triptych and arranging it after Mantegna’s fashion with - 
the frame and picture in one perspective. It is perhaps the 
grandest as it is the most formal of his altar-backs, consciously 
regal in the attitude of the Virgin, with saints as magisterial 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN = 357 


as so many Venetian senators. For the suburban church at 
Murano he set the Madonna low amid her paladins and opened 
up delicious landscape vistas at the sides. The thing, with 


Fic. 236. — Giovanni Bellini. Madonna with St. Paul and St. George. 
— Venice. 


all its dignity, is lyrical, and almost intimate. It anticipates 
the mood of the later open-air Sacred Conversations. 

In the nineties and the early years of the new century, 
masterpiece follows masterpiece, and we must proceed by 
selection. Giovanni invents a charming form of altar-piece 
for private chapels. These Madonnas and saints at half 
length have already the mood of the later conversation pieces, 
and need only the less symmetrical scheme which Bellini’s 
pupil, Titian, will soon give them. For harmony one might 
prefer the Madonna with two female saints, or for robust 
contrast and vitality the Madonna with two burly military 
champions, Figure 236. Both are in the Venetian Academy. 


358 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


The single, half-length Madonnas, Figure 237, of this period 
are counted by scores, and are in many public and private 
collections in Europe and America. They are singularly uni- 
form in inspiration, and yet the 
mood is so rich and noble that 
an apparent monotony is never 
cloying. Bellini’s gift in these 
pictures is to combine a kind of 
serene obviousness with great 
delicacy. There are hints of 
wistfulness and sadness through 
the series, but such sentiments 
are never much insisted on. The 
real mysticism of these pictures 
is nothing but the notation of 


the most natural and mysterious 
thing in the world —the bond 
between mother and babe, the 


Fic. 237. Giovanni Bellini. Ma- 
donna of the Trees. — Venice. 


pride of it, the exclusiveness of 
it, the joyous burden of it. Art could hardly be less theolog- 
ical or more genuinely religious than in these Madonnas. I 
think no human being could miss either their naturalness or 
their sacredness. 

As Giovanni Bellini approached the scriptural term of 
years, and the century drew to its close, he cultivates by way 
of recreation certain old leads which become new and powerful 
influences on his successors. The element of tact in the man 
is miraculous. He does nothing till the time has come when the 
doing will be most useful. Thus such pastoral recreations as 
the Religious Allegory in the Uffizi, Figure 238, and the little 
symbolical panels in the Venice Academy lead directly to the 
fantastic Arcadianism of Giorgione. The Religious Allegory 
is vaguely an illustration for the old French poem “Man’s 
Pilgrimage.” We have a Paradise, with the new souls in in- 


VENETIAN PAlNuUNG IBEPORE TITIAN 359 


fant form. The apostles Peter and Paul stand guard outside 
the celestial barrier, while the Madonna presides within. 
Beyond a dark stream is the hazardous world, a place of caverns 
and crags, and hermits and centaurs; of mystery and uncer- 


Fic. 238. Giovanni Bellini. oer Allegory, Souls in Paradise. 
— Uffizi. 


tainty. Perhaps Giovanni Bellini cared rather more for the 
darkling shadows over water and river bank, for the broken 
light under a veiled sky than for the formal allegory. Cer- 
tainly the element’ ‘of strangeness and glamour is evident 
enough in the five ‘little panels depicting virtues and vices. 
Again the faery quality, our earth grown strange to us, 1s the 
basis of the charm. We have noted similar fantastic inven- 
tions at Florence, notably in the work of Piero di Cosimo. 
Bellini evokes a more normal poetry which is based on a more 
intimate study of nature. Such landscapes as his, even when 
unpeopled, suggest nymphs and shepherds. 

At seventy, at the opening of the new century, Giovanni 
Bellini’s mind was still flexible, so much so that we hardly 
know whether he leads or follows such pupils of genius as 
Titian and Giorgione. His color acquires a deeper glow, his 


360 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING) 


warm shadows are heavier and more carefully graduated; he 


drops his few remaining Mantegnesque habits. In the 
Madonna for San Zaccaria, 


Figure 239, dated 1505, we have 
no longer the illusionistic per- 
spective of the altar-pieces of the 
80s. The group is set well back, 
the suffusion of the niche with 
air is more dense, the saintly 
figures have exchanged the old 
resolute, hieratic attitudes for a 
gentle dreaminess; the mood is 
that of Giorgione’s contemporary 
altar-piece at Castelfranco. In 


Fic. 240. Giovanni Bellini. Doge the portrait of Doge Loredano, 


Loredano. — London. 


Figure 240, of the same year 


resolution and wistfulness blend fascinatingly. The delin- 
eation has the force and certainty of Antonello da Messina 


with a refinement Antonello 
never even glimpsed. 

In these later years Gio- 
vanni Bellini multiplied, largely 
through student aid, conver- 
sation pieces with gracious 
gatherings of saints in the open 
air. The mood is that of courtly 
revery. Titian and Palma will 
later repeat the theme indef- 
nitely. One of the best is at S. 
Francesco della Vigna, and bears 
thexdate) 1507:ael tins, anvidys 
borrowing religious forms. In 
the altar-piece painted in 1513, 
Figure 241, for the church of 


Fic. 239. Giovanni Bellini. Madon- 
na with Saints. — S. Zaccaria. 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 361 


S. Giovanni Crisostomo, Giambellino anticipates the new 
and compositional forms of the rising generation. The rich 
architecture opens upon a contemplative old man reading on 
a crag, with majestic mountain 
lines behind him athwart a 
serene sky. Everything above 
is off-centre and diagonal, sta- 
bility being preserved by the 
great vertical figures of the 
saints in the foreground, and by 
the formality of the parapet 
behind them. We have almost 
a picture within a picture, the 
maximum of formality and in- 
formality, of nature and artifice 
— all those elaborate and calcu- 
lated beauties which we associate 
with Titian’s maturity. There is 
withal a mystical earnestness of 


which Titian himself lacked the |§ 
secret. Fic. 241. Giovanni Bellini. St. 
In his remaining two years John Crisostom.— S$. Giov. 
ee ’ Crisostomo. 
Bellini designed the lovely and 
modest nude Lady at her Toilet, at Vienna, and the Feast of 
the Gods, Figure 242, now in Mr. Joseph Widener’s collection 
at Philadelphia. His career ends in a rather skeptical accept- 
ance of the sensuous graces of the new humanism, for the gods 
are merely Venetian picnickers on an excursion. ‘The pene- 
trating poetry of the picture is of a homely sort without pre- 
tensions to grandeur. The landscape is partly by Titian. 
Giovanni died in 1515, being more than eighty-five years 
old. As late as 1506, Albrecht Durer found him the greatest 
artist at Venice. He had begun with the faint dawn of the 
Renaissance and ended in its midday glow. He had raised 


362 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Venetian painting to monumental estate, had mastered the 
secrets of landscape and its illumination, had initiated a delight- 
ful pastoralism, had conveyed religious emotion in forms 
humanly sweet and grave, had made the best of every world. 


Fic. 242. Giovanni Bellini. Feast of the Gods. — Widener Coll , Elkins 
Park; Pa: 


Scores of his pupils extended his manner to Brescia, Bergamo, 
Vicenza, and Treviso. His genius knew neither haste nor 
hesitation, he was almost never below his best. The Renais- 
sance produced a few painters of greater scope and powers, 
but none more consistently great as an artist or more venerable 
as a personality. 

To appreciate his value a glance at less progressive con- 
temporaries will suffice. We find Bartolommeo Vivarini nor- 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 363 


mally continuing the routine of the Murano School. In the 
polytych at Bologna, done with his elder brother Antonio in 
1450, we have with slight Squarcionesque improvements the 
old attenuated Venetian forms. In the highly decorated 


Fic. 243. Bartolommeo Vivarini. Madonna with Saints. — Naples. 


Madonna at Naples, dated 1465, we have an intelligent use 
of both the Squarcionesque realisms, and the refinements of 
Jacopo Bellini. Figure 243. Later pieces such as the triptych 
of 1487 at the Frari reveal a heavy-handed imitation of 
Mantegna, and any little originality of the master soon 
gets lost in the voluminous output of the shop. Bartolom- 
meo died in the last year of his century, whose fair aver- 
age he had well represented. His nephew Alvise Vivarini de- 


364. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


serves notice as the transmitter of the realism of Antonello da 
Messina to such artists as Montagna, Cima, and Lorenzo Lotto. 
As a portraitist he has real power. His great altar-pieces have 
their bleak and unattractive nobility. Venice greatly honored 
him in confiding several of the new panels for the Ducal Palace 
to his care. But since these works of the eighties were soon 
burned, our view of Alvise remains imperfect. I suspect 
modern criticism has somewhat exaggerated his importance. 
He was active from about 1460 to 1503, and his altar-pieces 
afford the best foils for Giovanni Bellini, as revealing a lesser 
capacity for growth. 

We have now to trace the old narrative style to its climax 
and end in Vittore Carpaccio.’ He inherited all the panoramic 
and luministic accomplishments of Gentile Bellini, but applied 
them with far greater imagination. He deals with legend, 
giving 1t contemporary color, and in his sensitive hands it be- 
comes the most veridical and charming of fairy lands. Car- 
paccio’s training is obscure to us. It may be that the very 
mediocre narrative painter, Lazzaro Bastiani, first taught him. 
In any case he drew more from Gentile Bellini’s resolute hand- 
ling of light, textures and costume. We first meet Carpaccio 
as an artist in the decoration of the Great School of St. Ursula 
from 1492 to 1495. He was probably all of fifty years old. 
The child-like legend, with its numerous embassies, meetings 
and partings, settings out and arrivings, gave him spectacular 
opportunities of which he made the most winning use. In the 
nine canvases now in the Academy we find an epitome of the 
courtesy, circumstance and adventure that accompanied 
travel in those days, and the mere spectacle is underlaid with a 
pensive ideality; for these are no ordinary journeys, but the 
quest of martyrdom by a princely youth and maiden. Nothing 
is insisted on, however, but the gayety of the events, and the 
picturesqueness of their settings. As in all good story telling, 
the persuasiveness depends on veracious minor episodes. 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 36s 


There are the most attentive scribes and secretaries, as if to 
carry off the unlikely matter they are inditing. The heavy 
ease of men-at-arms and self-conscious elegance of young 
Venetian fops make them credible witnesses to else incredible 


Fig. 244. Carpaccio. Prince Hero Taking Leave of his Father (L) and 
Greeting Ursula (R). — Venice. 


legend. To adorn his tales Carpaccio borrowed from the wood- 
cut illustrations to Breydenbach’s “Itinerary to Jerusalem.” 
It is remarkable how he invests these mere skeletons of cities 
with color, sunlight, the glamour of the orient. About all he 
draws a veil of air saturated with sunlight, concentrated into 
rising clouds whose shadows darken the lustrous blue of the 
tranquil lagoon. There never was a more ravishing racon- 
teur in the art of making incidentals count for essentials. 
Such a picture as Prince Hero taking leave of his father and 
greeting St. Ursula, Figure 244, is the fulfilment of all that 
old Jacopo Bellini and his Veronese precursors had dreamed 
of. It is typical of a series which has its more intimate phases 
only by way of exception. The virginal beauty of the legend 
gets a real expression only in the Vision of St. Ursula. Figure 
245. Lhe character of the earnest, slumbering face and the 
sweet slight body carries through the exquisitely indicated 
space, and we hardly need to be told that the wistful boyish 
angel is offering a martyr’s palm. Possibly it takes a mundane 


366 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


person like Carpaccio to realize the beauty of the more fan- 
tastic religious ardors. A completely devout person takes 
them as in the day’s work. 

Before the end of the century, Carpaccio painted for the 


Fic. 245. Carpaccio. Dream of St. Ursula. — Venice. 


School of S. Giovanni Evangelista the Miracle of the healing 
of a Demoniac. The picture is now in the Academy. It 
is a marvellous panorama of contemporary Venice, with the 
bustle of eager crowds, the slipping of gondolas over the canal, 
and light flickering over and caressing the manifold colors 
of the gay scene. It has the fidelity of Gentile Bellini 
without his dryness. 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 367 


The most delightful if not the most important monument of 
Renaissance Venice is unquestionably the School of St. George 
of the Slavonians. It is the only school that retains its primi- 

_ tive paintings still set in the original carved and golded wain- 


Fic. 246. Carpaccio. St. George and the Dragon. — School of St. 
George of the Slavonians. 


scoting. There one sees in the ground floor the legends of 
St. Jerome, an odd mixture of gravity, richness, and humor. 
Nothing more sumptuous than the Saint in his exquisitely 
appointed study, or more archly comic than the scene of con- 
sternation when the Saint brings home his lion from the desert. 
The series was painted about 1502. Opposite we have the 
chivalric legend of St. George of Cappadocia, painted some 
eight years later. Nothing could be more romantically en- 
trancing than the boyish champion charging intrepidly over 
the sun-dried shreds and tatters of his predecessors into the 
very jaws of the most confidently virulent of dragons, Figure 
246, unless it be the scene where he leads his tame dragon into 
the astounded court, or that in which he proudly baptizes his 
future bride and her parents while a Turkish band plays a fan- 
fare. About the blowing of these horns of elfiand there is no 
faintness whatever. We are in the realm of most palpable 
adventure and romance, and the emphasis depends on splendid 
color and on drawing of a magical alertness. 


368 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Carpaccio’s merit as the liveliest and most persuasive of 
raconteurs seems so definite that it is almost a shock to meet 
him in other capacities. Also a disappointment to find in the 
New Testament subjects from 
the School of the Albanians, 
1504, that in such stereotyped 
subjects he can be almost medi- 
ocre. Certainly in the great 
altar-piece of the Presentation 
in the Temple, Figure 247, at 
the Academy, he shows that he 
fully understands the new mon- 
umentality of Giovanni Bellini. 
The date is 1510. The picture 
is of the most reverent com- 
posure, and as tender as it is 
grand. In the portrait of Two 
Courtesans on a Balcony, in 
the Correr, Carpaccio shows a 
force of character wholly modern. With a kind of irony he 
has taken the moral emptiness of his sitters out of doors, 
flooded it with sunlight and air, given it harshness and ugli- 
ness, lavishing upon the rich costumes and fair skins the most 
delicate pains. John Ruskin will tell you that these are honest 
women. Such faith is more worthy of reverence than of imi- 


Fic. 247. Carpaccio. The Presen- 
tation. — Venice. 


tation. The greatness of Carpaccio lies in the impartiality 
with which he renders a certain kind of life on its own terms. 
The romancer is capable of appalling truthfulness. 

That he was also a mystic of the most intense sort is hard 
to believe. Yet if the marvellous Meditation on the Passion, 
Figure 248, in the Metropolitan Museum, be really by him, 
such is the case. In a desert the Dead Christ sits in a crum- 
bling throne, while two grim sages, St. Job and St. Onophrius, 
sit in rapt contemplation. ‘Their mood has evoked the bodily 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN — 369 


vision of their Lord. Art has produced few such symbols for 
the hallucinative intensity of the life contemplative. These 
weather-beaten forms seem an emanation from the sands and 
blistering sunlight. ‘They have few relations to our world. 


Fic. 248. — Ascribed to Carpaccio, perhaps Giovanni Bellini’s Design. 
Desert Hermits Meditating the Passion. — New York. 


Their souls move in vast uninhabited spaces. That Carpaccio 
can have produced this masterpiece as late as 1520, and cast 
it deliberately in a style learned forty years earlier seems to 
me a fantastic hypothesis, even if it has enlisted grave au- 
thority. The abundant similarities of the landscape with 
that of the St. Francis of the Frick Collection make me feel 
that the invention of this picture is Giovanni Bellini’s, at his 
moment of highest emotional power, about 1480. Since the 
actual painting is evidently in large part Carpaccio’s, I am 
driven to the by no means satisfactory hypothesis that Car- 


370 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


paccio may have executed this masterpiece, and the group to 
which it belongs, while serving as studio assistant to Giovanni 
Bellini. Such a view at least expresses my conviction that the 
picture transcends Carpaccio’s powers. 

As for his later years, his work goes off, he loses most of his 
Venetian patronage, and paints for the obscure Istrian and 
Dalmatian seaports, the critics mock him, he dies some time 
after 1523, leaving no deep impression. Vasari dispatches him 
with a few condescending lines, and nobody cares for him till 
young Burne-Jones came to Venice some sixty years ago. 
He plainly stands out of the main line of progress. He was too 
romantically traditional in his themes, and too minutely natu- 
ralistic in his vision to fit into the monumental development of 
the Renaissance. Ina sense he merely brings the old narrative 
tradition to a splendid close. But in so doing he preserves the 
look of an exquisite moment — of Venice still in her medieval 
gayety and splendor, not yet reduced to her ultimate mag- 
nificent decorum. In him we glimpse the eager comeliness of 
patrician youth, self-sufficient in love of living. And this we 
see between the glistening waters of the lagoon and the lambent 
blue heavens, with pearly domes and bell towers rising as 
lightly as the drifting summer clouds above. All this may or 
may not be a-part from what the wise esteem artistic greatness. 
In any case it is charm of the most persuasive and durable 
kind. 

Whether Giorgione of Castelfranco is to be regarded as the 
last of the Venetian primitives or as the first of the men of 
the Renaissance is no simple. problem. It is further compli- 
cated by the fact that we do not surely know what pictures 
he painted. According to the austerity or geniality of the 
critics, the lists vary from eight, Lionello Venturi’s, to over 
seventy, Herbert Cook’s. Naturally I also have my own list, 
which, with old copies, runs to twenty-four, but I am unwill- 
ing to claim demonstrative weight for what are merely strong 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 371 


subjective convictions. Walter Pater daintily evaded the 
issue by writing the most subtle of essays not on the person, 
but on the School of Giorgione. I shall in part imitate him in 
defining first the Giorgionesque 
mood before considering the 
canon of his works. 

On the side of minor technique 
Giorgione marks a great advance. 
He early abandons the old frank 
coloring of Giovanni Bellini for a 
mysterious method which abol- 


ishes line, builds in mass, invests 
the picture with deep shadows 


that are marvellously warm and 
colorful. What contemporaries 


loved to call the Venetian fre 
originates with him about Tisch re sh IG. 249 SLOT SIOnEg OF aS of 
Vasari may well be right in say- | 

ing that he learned the method directly from Leonardo da 
Vinci, who was a fugitive in Venice in the year 1500. Only 
Leonardo never taught him that shadow is color. That was 
Giorgione’s own beautiful discovery, one immensely important 
for all decorative painting ever since. 

In his early phase, if I am right in thinking that Sir Martin 
Conway’s two stories of Paris, Figure 250, and the Ordeal of 
the Infant Moses and Judgment of Solomon in the Uffizi, are 
his, Giorgione was merely a graceful continuer of the slighter 
narrative mood of Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio, — that is, 
distinctly a primitive artist. In his fully developed Arcadian 
vein he is neither a primitive nor fully of the Renaissance, but 
midway between, and his work constitutes not so much a 
pioneer effort as a delectable episode quite complete in itself. 
Unhappily we are almost without biographical details. Gior- 
gione was born in 1478, in Castelfranco, a long day’s ride 


372 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


towards the Friulian Alps. The country abounds in streams, 
meadows, and immemorial trees —is a subalpine Arcadia. 
He came pretty young to Venice and worked with Giovanni 
Bellini. Legend tells us that he was big and handsome, amor- 


Fic. 250. Giorgione. The Infant Paris found by Shepherds. — Sir 
Martin Conway. Mazdstone, England. 


ous, and a musician. We know that he died of the plague of 
1510, in his thirty-third year. The rest is conjecture from 
pictures some of which are his, and all of which are inspired 
by him. 

These breathe a single mood, that of Arcadian revery. It 
is a world of desire indulged for its own sweetness, of day 
dreaming apart from will, action, and results. More blithely 
it had pre-existed in the Idyls of Theocritus; more pensively, 
in the Eclogues of Virgil. This world revives a faraway pas- 
toral golden age, of lovers and their lasses, of nymphs and 
fauns, of vague ardors at once tempered and reinforced by a 
sympathetic nature. We are dealing with one of the oldest 
resources of poetry, and we can only understand this most 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 373 


beautiful visualization of the old theme by associating it with 
the tradition of literary pastoralism. 

Of course the Eclogues of Virgil were read generation by 
generation, if not very understandingly, through the Middle 
Ages. Still the more sensitive felt the appeal of mountain 
shadows lengthening over the evening meadows and the pathos 
of love-lorn shepherds sighing musically for hard-hearted shep- 
herdesses. By the middle of the fourteenth century, the pas- 
toral mode becomes once more contemporary, incidentally in the 
interludes of Bocaccio’s Decameron, explicitly in his idyl of 
alternate prose and verse, the Ameto. These are pale lights 
before the dawn. Pastoralism becomes widely current in the 
Arcadia of Jacopo Sannazaro, the bulk of which was ready by 
1489. It is the parent of those slow-moving, sentimental, and 
ever lengthy romances in verse and prose of which Sir Philip 
Sidney’s Arcadia is the most familiar to the modern reader. 
Dante had once longed for a magic boat in which congenial 
souls should drift forever and do nothing but discourse of love. 
Transfer these discourses to a leafy nook beside a running 
stream, with the herds in view below the branches, and nymphs 
and satyrs overhearing the debate — and you have Sannazaro’s 
Arcadia. We have the eternal poetry and perhaps eternal 
fallacy of a bygone golden age where duty and effort are absent, 
where love and poesy reign. 

In his most famous song, 4/ma beata, Sannazaro, celebrating 
a dead beauty, makes heaven itself merely an Arcadia — 


“Other mountains, other plains, 
Other groves and streamlets 
In heaven I see, and withal new blossoms. 
Other fauns and sylvans, through sweet summer places, 
Pursue their nymphs in happier loves than ours.” 


You find the mood clear cut in the Venetian nobleman and prel- 
ate, Pietro Bembo, both in his A4solani and in the separate 


374 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


poems. These were being handed about in Giorgione’s time, 
from 1500 on. Thus Bembo sings of the shepherd’s life: 


‘<Tryphon, who in place of ministrants and lackeys, 
Loggias and marbles, woven gold and purple, 
Lovest about thee willows leafy, cloister 
Of joyous hillocks, plants and rivulets — 

Well may the world admire thee.” 


Naturally the denizens of such paradises live and dress in a 
state of nature. The nymphs are lightly clothed and readily 
discard their slight draperies for the joys of the bath, which 
they considerately take within the range of their shepherd 
swains. Bembo warmly praises those “courteous garments’ 
which do not too much hide the fair throat and bosom, and 
roundly curses more churlish concealing fashions. 

Sannazaro describes with a confusing mixture of meta- 
phors what may be called a fortunate bath fall. 


“‘Leading one day my herds beside a stream, 
I saw a light amid those waters fair, 
Which bound me fast straightway with two blond tresses, 
And stamped a face all milk and roses 
Forever on my heart.” 


Earlier painters than Giorgione® had essayed these pastoral 
themes. Botticelli, Signorelli; in a sardonic way, Piero di 
Cosimo; Giovanni Bellini and even Andrea Mantegna had 
variously attempted this sort of painted poesy. But the 
flavor of the Giorgionesque poesy is fuller and richer. His 
beauty is that of languor, revery, dream. Whatever the os- 
tensible theme may be, his painting 1s Arcadian. His people 
have not merely no relation to our world, but slight and am- 
biguous relations to each other within the picture. They are 
isolated in their own musings, rarely look at each other, never 
suggest an action, but only a mood. Even the portraits sug- 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 375 


gest rather temperament than character or will. The proud 
youth, at Berlin, Figure 249, withdraws himself from purpose 
and deed. It is an early Giorgione. The Shepherd with a 
Flute, at Hampton Court, is bemused with his own fancy. 


Fic. 252. Giorgione. ‘Soldier and 
Gipsy.” — Giovanelli Palace. 


Fic. 251. Giorgione. Fire Or- 
deal of Infant Moses. — Pitzz. 


It is of the later years. The fastidious patrician, at New York, 
reveals an almost worried and sickly detachment. If indeed 
a Giorgione, which I cannot doubt, it is of his latest manner. 

Take the little Carpaccian idyls at Florence which cannot 
be much later than 1500. How far we are from real narrative! 
In the Ordeal of Moses, Figure 251, a child is thrusting his 
tender fingers among live coals. Ladies and gentlemen stand 
languidly about and bask in the pleasantness of their own 
thoughts. There is a similar nonchalance in the Judgment 
of Solomon where a newborn babe is threatened with the 
sword. The horror is treated as a negligible incident of an 
al fresco party. 

Again what is the meaning of the mysterious idyl in Prince 
Giovanelli’s gallery? Figure 252. In view of the picturesque 
walls and moat of Castelfranco, a half nude mother, oblivious 


376 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


of a coming thunder shower, nurses her child. Equally ob- 
livious of her and the weather, a fashionably dressed youth 
turns away. Ruins reflect the ominous lightning flashes. 


- Qld records call this (one of the few certain Giorgiones) The 


Fic. 253. Giorgione. The Three Philosophers. — Vienna. 


Soldier and the Gipsy — evidently a bad guess. A learned 
Viennese professor chooses to think that this is Prince Adrastus 
finding the forsaken Princess Hypsiphile. Nobody can pre- 
vent such conjectures or disprove them. It is safer to imagine 
that coming rain and thunder at Venice recalls some old mem- 
ory of similar weather and state of mind at Castelfranco, 
evokes some old desire of which this richly fanciful master- 
piece is the enigmatic symbol. Some story of loving and part- 
ing surely underlies the poesy, it would be foolish to be more 
specific than Giorgione himself has chosen to be. The Three 
Philosophers, at Vienna, Figure 253, again has been explained 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 377 


as Aeneas surveying the future site of Rome. What we actu- 
ally have is a glowing nook at eventide in which three grave 


Fic. 254. Giorgione. Madonna with St. George and St. Francis. — 
Castelfranco. 


men of different ages go separately about some task requiring 
thought and mathematical calculation. And even this duty 


378 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


is yielding to the spell and mystery of the evening hour. These 
pictures are probably a little earlier than the altar-piece of 
1504 at Castelfranco. 

That lovely work, Figure 254, has much of the intimacy of 


Fic. 255. Giorgione. Landscape by Titian. Sleeping Venus. — Dresden. 


Bellini’s altar-piece at S. Zaccaria, in formal arrangement it 
is rather monumental. The mood, however, is one of revery. 
St. Francis of Assisi makes his gesture only for himself, 
and St. George, exponent of the active life, broods moodily 
beneath his slackly held pennon. The Arcadian landscape 
quietly reinforces the idyllic feeling. Externally the thing 
is splendid in color, and as saturated with atmosphere as it 
is with mood. 

From now on the question of chronology becomes at once 
difficult, and, since we are dealing only with five years or so, 
relatively unimportant. The sleeping Venus at Dresden, 
Figure 255, may have been designed about 1505. A Cupid 
slumbering at the Goddess’s feet has been painted out, and 
the landscape was finished by Titian. The noble sleeping 
body, to use a word of Lucretius which Montaigne commends, 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 379 


seems “poured out” on the receptive earth — so grandly and 
easily it lies. The gestures are unconscious caresses. The 
Goddess dreams of old joys. What faun or sylvan even would 
not respect that dream? Not 
with passion, then, though him- 
self knowing all its sting, does 
Giorgione deal, but with ardors 
sublimated in memory. ‘The 
marvellous lines of this Venus, 


as sweeping as the curves of 
hills or river currents, were im- 
itated again and again, but 
neither Titian, Palma Vecchio, 
nor the rest ever recaptured the 
evasive poetry of their model. 
In 1508, working with Titian, 
Giorgione finished certain fres- 
coes for the outside of the Ger- 
man Warehouse. The remain- 
ing red blurs, and Zanetti’s 
fragmentary copies, tell us that 
the postures begin to have the 
breadth and conscious counter- 
poise of the advancing Renais- 
sance, but that the mood is still that of languor. Very like 
one of these figures is the fascinating Judith, at Petrograd, 
Figure 256. After the horrors of the night, she stands 
‘dreamily. Her lovely left leg escapes from the courteous 
draperies, and the foot touches lightly the brow of the peace- 
ful, severed head of Holophernes. The touch of the foot is 
almost careless, as if merely to assure herself that the portent 
is really true. Her head bends gently, her nerveless beautiful 
fingers barely feel her girdle or support her great sword. 
Behind her, morning forests and fields stretch towards a tran- 


Fic. 256. Giorgione. Judith.— 
Petrograd. 


380 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


quil sea and sky. The gestures are those of one between 
sleeping and waking, irresolutely feeling for some basis in 
reality. We are in a realm where the most awful deeds and 
experiences count only as raw material for delicate imaginings. 


Fic. 257. Giorgione. Pastoral Symphony. — Lougre. 


In the later works problems multiply, and a critic is pretty 
well reduced to personal intuitions. No doubt, however, 
should attach to the pathetic and nearly effaced Christ of St. 
Roch. The Christ is nobler than the earlier example at 
Fenway Court, the feeling more expansive. Still nobody, not 
even the executioner, seems to will the atrocity of the deed. 
The thing is not an act but a vision, pervaded by a dreamy 
tenderness. 

The completely repainted Pastoral Concert, Figure 257, at 
the Louvre is never the less fraught with Giorgione’s peculiar 
poetry. A courtly lover has struck a chord on the lute, and 
gazes intently, perhaps sadly, at a shepherd sitting close to 
him. A rustic, nude nymph whose back only is seen takes the 
pipe from her lips to listen. A proud beauty turns toward a 
fountain, light draperies slip away from her superb form, 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 381 


and with a graceful gesture of idleness she pours back into 
the fountain a tinkling jet from a crystal pitcher, while she 
bends to note the ripple and catch the pleasant, idle sound. 
This strange scene takes place on the edge of a vale that winds 
down to a glittering sea, affording a path to a shepherd and his 
flocks. The meaning? Modern criticism is loath to look be- 
yond contrasts of nude and clothed forms, swing of treetops 
and of sky, subtle interplay of light and shade. My own 
reading is merely based on the contrast between the rustic 
and urban lovers, and an intuition that the courtier in peering 
so wistfully at the shepherd is merely seeing himself in a 
former guise. In lassitude, perhaps in satiety, beside a courtly 
mistress who is absent from him in spirit, there rises the vision 
of earlier simpler love and of a devoted shepherdess who once 
piped for him in the shade. ‘The vision rises as his listless 
hand sweeps the lute strings in a chord unmarked by the far 
lovelier mistress at the fountain. The golden age of love, like 
. Arcady itself, is ever in the past. Such may be the reading of 
this poesy. Indeed all Giorgione’s pictures are less facts than 
apparitions born of roving thought in idleness, — such stuff 
as dreams are made of. 

The famous Concert, Figure 258, of the Pitti since Morelli’s 
time has been generally classed as an early Titian, I think 
erroneously. The precise and powerful execution of the Monk’s 
head is certainly his, but I question if the motive itself lay 
within the scope of his lucid and uncomplicated imagination. 
An Augustinian monk holds the initial harmony on the clavi- 
cord and turns towards the ’cellist while the singer waits im- 
passively. And this simple theme becomes a universal symbol 
for thwarted desire. The player asks a kind of sympathy 
which this world rarely affords, which certainly these com- 
panions cannot give. As in the Pastoral Symphony, the 
music awakens impossible longings, is the accompaniment of 
inadequacy. ‘Titian was too robust ever to have imagined 


382 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


such a thing, and I feel we need only modify the old tradition 
to the extent of giving Titian a hand in an unfinished Giorgione 
to account for this poignant and most characteristic master- 
piece. 

There remains old and good tradition for crediting Gior- 


Fic. 258. Giorgione cum Titian. The Concert. — Pitt. 


gione with the design of the altar-piece in San Giovanni Crisos- 
tomo. The execution is unquestionably by Sebastiano del 
Piombo. If this view be correct, Giorgione attained the ex- 
ternal features of the coming Renaissance style, missing its 
athleticism. Certainly the abstraction of the saint and the 
unmotivated appearance of the three virtues, and their unre- 
lated gracefulness, is entirely in Giorgione’s manner, while the 
whole invention is alien to Sebastiano’s heavy and forthright 
talent. 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 383 


For the view [| have tried to give of this poet picture-maker 
I may claim at least the merit of consistency. There is only 
one theme — languor of love and of remembered happiness; 
and there is only one setting — 
the Arcadia of the pastoral 
poets. Giorgione is the first 
painter who realized Leonardo’s 
definition of painting as “mute 
poetry,” yet not quite mute for 
there is generally a suggestion 
of music. And the music is less 
heard than contemplated, as is 
the case in one of his latest 
pictures, the Shepherd Boy, Fig- 
ure 259, who hesitates to set the 
flute to his lips lest the melody 
fall short of that which the im- 
agination has already heard. 

For ten years after Giorgione’s death his mood dominated 
Titian with most of the rising artists. It seemed likely to 
replace the sturdy and objective art of Venice with a quite 


Fic. 259. Giorgione. Shepherd 
with a Flute.— Hampton Court. 


alien subjectivism. Meanwhile the normal effort of old 
Giovanni, Bellini and of young Titian continued. The Renais- 
sance offered to the outer eye new dignities and splendors. 
The inner eye went bankrupt in the numerous imitators of 
Giorgione, in trivial symbolism and merely playful mythology. 
After her brief pause in Arcadia, Venice once more took ac- 
count of her own proud charms. The nymphs paled before the 
comparison, Arcadia vanished. But it never was wholly for- 
gotten, and, ever since, those who have craved actually to see 
the golden age of poesy have had to consult Giorgione of 
Castelfranco. 


384 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER VII 


PRAISE OF MANTEGNA IN THE RENAISSANCE 


The immense authority of Mantegna kept his name on all honor lists 
of painters long after his death. 

Lorenzo of Pavia, writing in 1504 to Isabella d’Este, says of a 
Madonna by Giovanni Bellini: 

“The Painter has made a great effort to do himself honour, chiefly 
out of respect to M. Andrea Mantegna, and although it is true that in 
point of invention it cannot compare with the work of Messer Andrea, 
that most excellent master, I pray Your Excellency to take the picture, 
both for your own honour and also because of the merit of the work.” 

Julia Cartwright, /sabella d’ Este, New York, 1903, Vol. I, p. 351. 

A little later Lorenzo writes: 

“And, as I have said before, in point of invention no one can rival 
Andrea Mantegna, who is indeed a most excellent painter, the foremost 
of our age. But Zuan Bellini excels in colouring.” 1G5S 2: 

On Oct. 16, 1506, Lorenzo writes, on learning of Mantegna’s death: 

“‘T am much grieved to hear of the death of our Messer Andrea Man- 
tegna. For indeed we have lost a most excellent man and a second 
Apelles, but I believe that the Lord God will employ him to make some 
beautiful work. As for me, I can never hope to see again a finer draughts- 
man and more original artist.” 

Isabella replied: 

‘Lorenzo, — We were sure that you would grieve over the death of 
M. Andrea Mantegna, for, as you say, a great light has gone out.” 

sor i7260; 


TITIAN’S VIEW OF MANTEGNA 


As late as 1519, Titian admired the Mantegnas at Mantua. Girolamo 
da Sestola, Isabella’s music master, writes to her: 

““M. Dosso and M. Tiziano, another good master who is making a 
fine picture here [The Bacchanal, at Madrid] for the Lord Duke, went 
to Mantua. He saw all Mantegna’s works, and praised them greatly 
to our signor, and he also praised your studies. But above all, he ad- 
mired your Tondo [the frescoed ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi, Fig. 
219| exceedingly, and calls it the finest thing he has ever seen. Our 
Signor has one here, but Titian says yours is incomparably the finest.” 

Le. iapyaeee: 


VENETIAN PAINTING BEFORE TITIAN 385 


ARIOSTO’s Honor List OF PAINTERS 


Ariosto as late as 1515 still includes Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini 
among the best artists. The list is instructive as to the fallibility of 
contemporary judgments. The two Dossi and Sebastiano del Piombo 
today have lost their place in the roll. 


“And those who were and still are in our days — 
Leonardo, Andrea Mantegna, Giambellino, 
The Dossis, he who chiselled and colored equally 
Michel, more than mortal, Angel divine, 
Sebastian, Raphael, Titian who honors 
No more Cadore, than they Venice and Urbino.” 
Orlando Furioso, Canto XXXIII, 2. 


LomaAzzo’s List OF GREAT PAINTERS AND THEIR KINDRED POETS 


“Each painter has naturally had a genus more conformable to one 
poet rather than another, and has followed that poet in his work, as it 
_ is easy to see in the modern painters. For one sees that Leonardo has 
expressed the movement and decorum of Homer, Polidoro the grandeur 
and sweep of Virgil, Michelangelo the profound obscurity of Dante, 
Raphael the pure majesty of Petrarch, Andrea Mantegna the keen 
judgment of Sannazaro, Titian the variety of Ariosto, and Gaudenzio 
Ferrari the devotion which one finds expressed in the books of the 
saints.” 

Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell’ Arte delle Pittura, Milan, 1584, p. 283. 

See also Castiglione’s list in Illustrations to Chapter VI, p. 313. 


GIORGIONE — LEONARDO ON RURAL AND PASTORAL DELIGHTS 


‘““What moves thee, O man, to quit thy city habitations and leave 
thy friends and kin, and go in places wild by reason of mountains and 
valleys, if not the natural beauty of the world, the which, if thou well 
considerest,-thou enjoyest only through the sense of sight? And if the 
poet wishes to call himself also a painter in such matters, why do you 
not take such sites as described by the poet and stay at home without 
feeling the excessive heat of the sun? And would not this be more useful 
and less wearisome since it is done in coolness and without moving about 
and risk of illness? 

But the mind cannot enjoy the benefit of the eyes, windows of its 
habitation, and cannot receive the varieties of delightful spots, cannot 


386 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


see the shady valleys furrowed by the play of winding streams, cannot 
see the various flowers which with their colors make a harmony for the 
eye — and so with all the things which can be represented to that eye.” 
“But if the painter in the cold and harsh winter time sets before thee 
those same places painted, and others, in which thou mayest have ex- 
perienced thy pleasures beside some fountain, thou canst see again 
thyself as a lover, with thy loved one in blossoming meadows, under the 
sweet shadow of verdurous trees — wilt thou not receive quite an other 
pleasure than from hearing such an effect described by the poet?” 
. Leonardo, Trattato, Wien, 1882, p. 44. 


This is so fully in the mood of Giorgione’s idyllism that one likes to 
think that he may have talked over such themes with Leonardo when 
they met in Venice in 1500. 


VENETTAN PAINTING OF THE 
RENAISSANCE 


Fic. 260. Titian. Bacchus and Ariadne. — London. 


CuapTer VIII 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE* 
RENAISSANCE 


Titian before 1545 Some contemporaries, Sebastiano del Piombo, Palma 
Vecchio — The advent of Modern Sensitiveness in Lorenzo Lotto — 
Moretto of Brescia — Correggio — Titian’s last Manner, its subjectivism 
and impressionism — The Portraitist Moroni — Tintoretto and the new 
dramatic emotionalism — Paolo Veronese, his spectacular mastery and 
impressionism, his characteristic works — Eighteenth Century Venetians: 
Tiepolo, Canaletto and Guardi — Longhi. 


The glory of Venetian painting is to an unusual degree that 
of a single individual, Titian! of Cadore. He lived nearly 
a hundred years, from 1477 to 1576, and we can trace his paint- 
ing for more than seventy years of serene and unbroken pro- 
gress. He had great contemporaries — Sebastiano del Piombo, 
Palma Vecchio, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Lorenzo Lotto, 
Moroni, Moretto of Brescia — but so various and comprehen- 
sive 1s his achievement that their work seems merely so many 
extensions of the paths first explored by him. In his noble 
and measured sensuousness, he seems nearer the Greeks than 
any other Italian painter. 

If he is something less than admirable as a character, it is 
because of an unpleasantly calculating side. He schemed 
ruthlessly for preferment and lucrative sinecures, had the 
repute of envying young artists of talent, flattered to the limit 
his Hapsburg, patrons, bargained and begged concerning prices, 
let himself be puffed egregiously by his blackguard friend, 
Pietro Aretino, first and most formidable of yellow journalists. 

389 


390 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Yet this element of craft in the man was eminently Venetian. 
They schemed for splendor and pleasure, and measured even 
their indulgences. ‘Thus we should not expect lyrical raptures 
or extremes of any sort in Titian. His art is one of judgment 
and moderation. Indeed that calculating spirit which makes 
him unamiable as a man was a source of strength to 
him as an artist. One of his pupils, Palma Giovine, has de- 
scribed his manner of working. First he laid in his pictures 
heavily in neutral tones. Then he turned them to the wall for 
months to dry. Then he would pass from one to the other, 
scrutinizing each “‘as if it were his worst enemy.” He would 
add color, amend drawing and composition, thus systematically 
carrying many pictures forward at a time, and subjecting each 
to repeated criticism and correction. He never painted a figure 
at one go, saying that “he who improvises his song never 
achieves learned verses or well turned.” Precisely the great- 
ness of Titian lay in his capacity to put ardor into these pro- 
longed critical processes. ‘Thus if certain raptures are denied 
him, he is never below himself, but always as noble in sentiment 
as he is resplendent in color. 

Tiziano Vecellio was born at Cadore, in the Dolomites, in 
1477.2. Its shadowy oaks and blue alps live in his backgrounds. 
At eleven he was put with a mosaic worker, Zuccati, at Venice.. 
He may have worked for a time with Gentile Bellini, but at- 
tained his real development in the studio of Giovanni Bellini, 
under the stimulus of his fellow pupil, Giorgione. ‘This inti- 
mate and poetical phase of Titian’s genius lasts from before 
1505 to 1516 and the Assumption. 

His second period is that of fullest color and vitality. It 
runs from 1517 to say 1536, Titian’s fortieth to fifty-ninth 
year, and the characteristic works are the monumental altar- 
pieces at Venice and the Mythologies painted for the Este 
family at Ferrara. 

The third period extends from about 1537 to 1548. It is 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 391 


marked by deeper resonances of color that is tending towards 
tone, and by a more objective and static ideal. Energy is no 
longer squandered, and intimate poetry is not sought. Typical 


ig Fic. 262, Titian) Portrait. of 
Fic. 261. Titian. Portrait so- a Youth. — Temple Newsham, 
called “ Ariosto.”” — London. England. 


works are those mythologies and portraits done for the Duke 
of Urbino, and the early Hapsburg portraits. 

The fourth period begins with 1548 or a little earlier, Titian’s 
seventieth year, and lasts nearly thirty years till his death. 
A looser and more synthetic construction, the substitution of 
broken shades and tone for frank color, a more tragic and ardent 
mood, a more energetic grandeur of composition, with lesser 
formality, are the marks of this amazing last phase, in which 
Titian becomes a precursor of Rembrandt and Velasquez. 
Since he now works chiefly for the Hapsburgs, the great ex- 
amples are at Madrid and Vienna. 

The earliest Titians show the sultry shadows of Giorgione, 
and are distinguishable from his work only by a more linear 
quality, and by a greater explicitness of mood. ‘Titian’s poetry 
is direct and rarely ambiguous. What ardors of flesh and spirit 
are suggested in his early portraits of men! The portrait of 


392 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


a bearded man in London, Figure 261, is conceived entirely 
in Giorgione’s fashion, as a short bust showing the hands, and 
the mysterious envelopment in warm shadow is Giorgione’s 
as is the sensitiveness of touch 
and characterization. But with 
all his gentle beauty, the man is 
formidable. His aloofness is no 
revery, but some preparation of 
will for action. Again Giorgione 
would hardly have labored to 
suggest the material splendor of 
the silvery satin sleeve. Even 
more perfect is the half-length 
of a young patrician at Temple 
Newsham, Figure 262, England. 
It is full of a reserved poetry, 


1 yet the effect is as well almost 
Fic. 263. Titian. The Tribute shrewd and diplomatic. This 


Money. — Dresden. 


youth has the Venetian capacity 
for both passion and affairs. Both these portraits should be 
a little earlier than 1510. Such masterpieces of smoulder- 
ing ardor as the Knight of Malta, erroneously ascribed to 
Giorgione and the Man with a Glove, at Paris, must be a 
little later. In concentration these are as fine as Giorgione’s 
portraits, but quite a different spirit transpires from the 
investing shadows. These men of Titian are no day-dreamers, 
but resolute and purposeful. They live little in memory and 
much in prospect. Their imagination implies action and 
possession. Even the drawing is more resolute. Study the eye 
sockets, temples, and cheek bones of these early Titians. 
Nowhere in Giorgione do you get such a sense of inner bony 
structure, of thicker and thinner cushions of flesh, of tenser or 
slacker skin. The method finds its most admirable expression 
in the two marvellous heads of the Tribute Money (1514-5), 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 393 


at Dresden, Figure 263. Yet how little mystery or pathos is 
invoked. With a gesture and an expression of exquisite 
consideration and breeding, the Saviour baffles the most eager 
and fanatical of inquisitors. Nothing could be more unlike 


Fic. 264. Titian. The Three Ages. — Bridgewater House, London. 


the abstracted and almost morose Christs of Ghiorgione. 
As usual, Titian stands on the ground of the finest worldliness, 
as the Greeks had done. With the supernal, whether in heaven 
or Arcadia, he has little concern. 

In the early poesies Titian at once manifests his adoration of 
Giorgione and his own independence. In the Three Ages, 
Figure 264, at Bridgewater House we may grasp at its highest 
beauty his robust Arcadianism. In a meadow landscape an 
ardent nymph woos her bronzed swain. Complacently he 
accepts her unreserved advances. Nothing could be more 
explicit than the relation between the lovers, and with 
equal plainness an old man and sleeping child serve to 
teach us that youth and its sweetest ardors are but a brief 
pause between childhood and old age. Let us then seize 
the moments when nature and love are kind to us. Such 
is the forthright poetry of Titian. It is the poetry of every 


394. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


boy and every girl— simple, classic, unchangeable. Think 
of the overtones and personal interpretations with which 
Giorgione would have overlaid such a theme. Such twilight 


Fic. 265. Titian. “Sacred and Profane Love.” — Borghese, Rome. 


mysteries are alien to Titian’s fervent and lucid spirit. He 
loves the morning hour with work and love ahead, as 
Giorgione loves the veiling glamour and brooding memories 
of eventide. | 

The Three Ages was probably painted about 1512, the far 
more famous poesy, misnamed Sacred and Profane Love, Fig- 
ure 265, is two or three years later.. The sumptuous variety 
and richness of Titian are here at their height. Luminous 
marbles, pearly nude forms, lustrous stuffs, dark shimmer of 
foliage and sun-swept slopes of grass seem created merely to 
set off their respective beauties of hue and texture. Purples, 
azure, rose, saturated greens form a sonorous chord of colors 
which is so satisfying that one scarcely asks why a Cupid stirs 
the waters of a magic fountain, and why a splendidly clothed 
figure sits tranquilly at the side while a superb nude figure 
turns impulsively and holds aloft a burning lamp. 

Explanations of the fable abound. It is Venus persuading 
Helen to harken to Paris, or Medea to aid Jason. So the 
Germans. I am sure only that if we knew the meaning it 
would be quite as simple as these explanations. My friend, 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 395 


the late William P. Andrews, suggested that we have a lovely 
symbolism for the inquietude of maidenhood and the com- 
posure of matronhood —love in prospect and retrospect. 
The universality of the interpretation is in its favor. Titian’s 
mind worked socially and con- 
cretely. Plainly the nude figure 
is reminiscent of Giorgione’s list- 
less beauty by the fountain in 
the Pastoral Concert, Figure 257. 
Titian’s maiden lacks something 
of the momentary grace and 
spontaneity of her model, but 
has in compensation a_ fuller 
grandeur. 

Perhaps the ideal portrait of 
Flora (1515-16), in the Pitti, jj 
Figure 266, should be reckoned * 
with the poesies rather than 
with portraits. In material beauty few Titians excel it. The 
curded whites of the drapery vie with the flushed ivory of face 
and bosom. The sweetness of the impression is almost awe- 


Gc. 266. Titian. Flora. —Pitti. 


inspiring. What a world it is that thrusts forth carelessly such. 
beauty as this! Think of Giorgione’s quite similar Shepherd 
with the Pipe, Figure 259, and imagine again the twilight 
mystery with which he would have invested this apparition. 
Titian on the contrary thinks and feels like every man, but 
with an intensity and clearness quite his own. The lyrical 
and subjective note is incidental and superficial in him even 
when he most seems to resemble his lost comrade. 

Titian’s progress in composition is best noted in the reli- 
gious pieces. From the first he seeks to break up the old inert 
symmetries. He invents active balances, brings the main 
thrusts to the sides of the pictures rather than to the centre. 
Thus even his Conversation Pieces gain implications of action 


396 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


and energy. In the altar-piece of St. Peter with Donors, at 
Antwerp, perhaps as early as 1502, and still somewhat in 
Bellini’s style, we find the enthroned figure moved to the side 
and the accessory figures arranged in a processional approach. 
The somewhat later altar-piece 
of St. Mark at the Salute, 
painted probably in 1504, Figure 
267, again evades the old central 
symmetries. The Saint is en- 
throned off centre and his posi- 
tion gains great energy and 
-novelty from its elevation and 
consequent fore-shortening. The 
four plague saints keep the old 
symmetry, their types are partly 
from Bellini (the St. Sebastian), 
partly from nature. The struct- 
ure in glowing shadow is that of 
Giorgione. We trace the same 


Fic. 267. Titian. St. Mark with evasion of old symmetries and 
Plague Saints. — Salute: 


the same Giorgionesque fire in 
the Baptism of Christ, in the Capitoline at Rome, and Christ 
and Mary Magdalen, at London. Such pictures with their 
slightly conscious emphasis prepare the way for the more 
assured and sonorous harmonies of the great altar-backs of 
the ’20s. 

The Madonnas and Conversation pieces again show us most 
vividly how his taste is working. The Gipsy Madonna, Figure 
268, at Vienna, painted about 1505, is highly Giorgionesque, 
but Giorgione never painted such sculptural forms, nor ever 
conceived so resolute a Christchild. Even the throwing of the 
outlet to one side reveals Titian. At Madrid and Vienna are 
superb half-length Madonnas arranged symmetrically after 
Bellini’s fashion, but with greater freedom of pose. Titian 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 397 


soon saw that the old compositional forms could not express 
the new energy. He makes repeated experiments, shifts the 
Madonna to one side, as in the unfinished Madonna with St. 
Anthony at Florence. He adds figures and rearranges them 


Fic. 268. Titian. Gipsy Madonna. — Vienna. 


until the Conversation piece becomes an audience, with the 
saints and donors approaching the Madonna, as in an Ado- 
ration of the Magi. We find the completed form in the 
admirable Conversation piece, of about 1510 with its two ver- 
sions in the Louvre and at Vienna, Figure 269; and consid- 
erably later, a further development in those numerous full- 
length Holy Families in landscapes of which the Madonna of 
the Hare (1530), Figure 270, and The Marriage of St. Cath- 
erine, at Paris, are consummate types. And with all the 
conscious experimentalism of this work, the sense of character 
and of beauty is unperturbed. As compared with the con- 


398 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


temporary Holy Families of Raphael, the accent is more in- 
dividual and local. These superb Madonnas and gracious 
female saints with attendant ‘martyrs and church doctors, 
are merely the lads and lasses of Carpaccio’s legends, grown. 


Fic. 269. Titian. Madonna with Saints. — Vienna. 


up to manhood and womanhood, increased in dignity and 
sweetness. 

Until the death of Giovanni Bellini, in 1515, Titian seems a 
little hampered by his example as by that of Giorgione. Then, 
as if relieved of a restraint, Titian pursues his own aims. His 
design, in such great altar-backs as the Assumption and the 
Madonna of the Pesaro family, doubles its breadth and energy. 
His mythologies, in the bacchanals for the Alabaster Chamber 
of Alphonso d’Este, at Ferrara, are no longer pensive lyrics, 
but dithyrambs; primordial lyrics, for animation: and p ver. 
The religious pictures, such as the noble Entombment in the 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 399 


Louvre, are no longer insistently pathetic. Subjective poetry 
is everywhere giving way to masculine assertion of the splen- 
dor of love, motherhood, comradeship. And these great ob- 
jective commonplaces, which were the very staple in their 


Fic. 270. Titian. Holy Family with Rabbit. —- Paris. 


day of Greek Epic and Sculpture, receive in Titian their finest 
modern embodiment. His new energy requires a changed 
color. All the hues are brighter and more resonant. ‘Their 
-harmonies no longer require the bond of deep shadow, but are 
positive and established at the middle of the color scale, where 
color is most itself. If the music of Giorgione was that of | 
vibrating lute strings, that of Titian has the clarity and clangor 
of exquisitely harmonized woodwind and brass. 

Before sounding this new music, Titian prudently secured 
the sinecure, a Commissionership of the Salt Taxes, which old 
Giovanni Bellini had enjoyed. While scheming for it, he was 
designing also the most famous of his great altar-pieces, the 
Assumption, Figure 271. It was finished in 1518, set on the 
highalcar of the Friar’s Church, whither it has lately returned. 
Titian adopts a form of composition which Fra Bartolommeo 


400 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


and Raphael had employed. The upper celestial tier is sym- 
metrically arranged, almost in a domical way, the lower tier 
abounds in swinging turns and gestures, one carefully balancing 
the others. The forms are large and athletic, such as the Re- 


Fic. 271. Titian. The Assump- Fic. 272. ‘Titian.- Pesaro 
tion. — S. M. dei Frari. Madonna. — Frart. 


naissance preferred, for greater gravity. Their weight is com- 
pensated by the ease with which they hold themselves and by 
the numerous floating and falling cherubs, playfully at home in 
their clouds, like so many celestial rose leaves for the crispness 
and lightness with which Titian’s brush has touched them in. 
An over-spiritual observer might ask, Why are the Apostles 
so jubilant at losing their beloved Mistress? Only a little 
earlier, Giovanni Bellini, who painted the theme for San Pietro 
Martire at Murano, invested his witnesses with pathos, silence, 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 401 


wonder and awe. In comparison Titian is obvious, and barely 
reverent. He thinks of nothing but that this is Mary’s moment 
of highest glory, so of course her friends cheer boisterously as 
they wave her off heavenwards. ‘Titian’s mind does not work 
in half tones of sensibility, yet he is honestly religious in his 
own way. The Lord’s people are good enough for him, and he 
likes them not in the hush of devotion but in the expansive 
moments of action. The attitude is operatic. Choruses have 
no business with overtones, all voices shall be robusio. What 
infallible taste he shows along these simple lines! There is no 
smallness, no mere floridness of utterance, no hint of over- 
emphasis. Such art is the despair of the modern artist. He 
cannot feel so simply. The great enduring commonplaces 
are denied to his more complicated genius. 

Perhaps Titian is even more himself in the Madonna of the 
Pesaro Family, Figure 272, which was in hand from 1519 to 
1526. For animation he sets the throne of Mary to the right, 
and carries splendid columns back in depth. He gives to every 
gesture of saint or donor a balancing relation to the gracious 
curve of the body of the Queen of Heaven. He renews the 
Giorgionesque mystery in the portraits of children, adds 
picturesque accessories of armor, velvet, and silken banner. 
The picture is as rich as it is logical and monumental, as varied 
in character as it is unified in mood. It is only by chance that 
it stands almost over [itian’s tomb, and yet it would have been 
hard to find a picture that better represents both his more 
intimate and his more objective perfections. Even such 
masterpieces as the Madonna with six Saints in the Vatican 
(1523), and the lost Slaying of Saint Peter Martyr (before 1530), 
which enjoyed three centuries of praise, seem a little set and 
over-reasonable in comparison. 

Alphonso d’Este’s Alabaster Chamber at Ferrara represented 
the high point of mythological poesy for the Full Renaissance, 
as Castello with its Signorelli and Botticellis marked a similar 


402 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


culmination for the Early Renaissance. It is lamentable that 
we see these essential expressions of two great moments torn 
from their context and relegated to the promiscuity of museums. 
Yet the scattered poesies from the Alabaster Chamber remain a 
delight, at London, Madrid, and Philadelphia, and give us the 
truest impression of the pagan greatness of Titian in his matur- 
ity. For this series old Giovanni Bellini, in 1514, painted a 
sylvan Feast of the Gods, Figure 242. Titian, succeeding to 
the work, freely repainted the landscape, to harmonize it 
with his own poesies.. Two years later Titian set up The 
Worship of Venus, now in the Prado. Before the white 
image of the goddess the shadowy lawn swarms with winged 
loves. They frolic, dally, pluck apples shaken down by 
their mates from the trees above. The strong little bodies 
glow delicately like the inside of a great shell. A rhythm of 
joyous life runs through the picture. In due course Rubens, 
Boucher and Fragonard will fill earth and air with tumbling 
Cupids like these, but will hardly recapture the spontaneous 
ecstasy of this scene. It is baffling to learn that its origins are 
academic — from the imaginary gallery of the Alexandrian 
philosopher, Philostratus. Again a two year interval, for Titian 
ever declined to be hurried, and, in 1520, the Bacchanal, or 
Bacchus among the Andrians, was ready. About the lolling 
figures of two clothed nymphs, the sleek brown bodies of 
nude sylvans bend in grand gestures as they pour the wine. 
At the left Bacchus in professional aloofness goes about 
the serious business of emptying a flagon. At the right is, 
flung the relaxed body of a nymph overcome by sleep and wine. 
Her splendid nudity shines forth in competition with a soaring 
afternoon cloud, while behind her a lightly draped shepherd 
dances with his lass. The orgy is swept by the clean breeze 
and dappled with sunlight — purifying elements. We have 
not intoxication in the gross sense, but the Greek notion of an 
elemental Bacchic inspiration. 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 403 


The decoration was triumphantly completed in 1523 with the 
Bacchus and Ariadne, Figure 260, now in the National Gallery. 
The noisy train of the god of wine sweeps into the picture 
oblivious of the heroine. As the leopards swing the car along 


Fic. 273. Titian. ‘The Entombment. — Louvre. 


the strand, the God flings himself rapturously towards the form 
of startled Ariadne, who with a grand, hesitating gesture 
turns her head and body away while her legs and feet still 
bear her towards her wooer. The thing sparkles with wine- 
red and azure, tingles electrically with passion, gives forth a 
clamor which is also a harmony. Its exuberance is well con- 
tained in noble compositional forms. The passionate yet 
disciplined soul of Titian approaching fifty is fully expressed 
in this marvellous work. 

Passing to the religious pictures once more, the Entombment, 
Figure 273, now in the Louvre, which was painted for the 
Gonzagas about 1525, is again a masterpiece of unaffected feel- 
ing and of finest disposition of masses. The central group looms 
against the sky with the grandeur of a great dome. Whoever 


404. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


has seen strong men caring for the dead or stricken will realize 
the reserve and nobility of acts which are expressions of sym- 
pathies too deep for words. I saw things like that at the 
Messina earthquake. Equally fine and restrained is the pro- 
tective attitude of the Magdalen towards a Mary stark and 
mute with grief. Magnificent is the contrast of the grand 
nude forms of the dead Christ, with the rich stuffs in which the 
attendants are clothed. I imagine when Titian conceived this 
simple elegy with such power and pathos he may have had 
scornful reference to Raphael’s distorted and sensational version 
of the same theme, Figure 186. And perhaps the esthetic 
lesson of the picture is that choice feeling is far more difficult 
of attainment than fine painting. 

In 1533, Titian, by command, met the Emperor Charles V 
at Augsburg, was promptly made a knight and later a count 
palatine. From now on he was much employed by the Emperor 
and his son Philip. With that relationship a change begins to 
come over his art. He becomes less exuberant, more official 
and objective. Titian at sixty has said almost every possible 
thing on his own account, and is content for a space to be 
observer and recorder of the stately world about him. We 
have descriptions of him at this time, maintaining a princely 
hospitality in his palace, and declining to share the dissipations 
which he willingly provided for such loose-living friends as 
Francesco Sansovino and Pietro Aretino. 

He strangely depoetizes himself. The change comes some- 
where about 1536, and a notable evidence of it is in the portrait 
of a lady in peacock blue velvet, in the Pitti. Posterity has 
agreed to call her simply La Bella, and so impersonal a 
style well befits her impassive beauty. Materially ‘Titian 
has never painted more exquisitely, but it has become a 
painting of surfaces. The appeal is vague, general, social, 
there are no personal intimations, merely a magnificent 
statement of entirely obvious perfections. 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 405 


Again Titian is content to be the mere painter in the so- 
called Venus of Urbino, Figure 274. It was painted about 
1538, and is in the Uffizi. Evidently the sleeping Venus of 
Giorgione is in Titian’s mind, but what a loss in awaking her! 


Tia SE TOLL OEEE 


Fic. 274. Titian. Venus of Urbino. — Pitti. 


Titian sees the gracious forms for what they are of nacreous 
light and rosy shadow, he sees the room for what it is in dis- 
tribution of curtained interior and alcove space irradiated by 
morning light. He studies curiously the delicate nuances of 
bluer sheet and creamier skin, he models out the slender body 
with faintest investment of almost imperceptible shadow. In 
short, he is just a painter, but what a painter he is! 

About the same time he did the official portraits of Eleonora 
and Federigo Gonzaga. He treats them as grandees. They 
are imposing, almost pompous, every inch the prince and 
princess. He sees with a courtier’s eye, and gives to official 
portraiture that impersonal cast which it has since only too 
faithfully retained. He revives the great traditions of Vene- 


406 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


tian narrative painting. The great wall painting, in the Ducal 
Palace, of the Imperial Victory at Cadore has perished. Old 
copies and engravings tell us of its energy, picturesqueness and 
panoramic breadth. Fortunately the great mural canvas, 
finished in 1538 and representing Mary entering the Temple, 
is still in its place; for the old School of the Carita has become 
the Academy. In this picture Titian realizes all that the 
Veronese and Venetian painters from Altichiero down had 
sought for. Like his predecessors, he is chiefly spectacular, 
subordinating character, but he attains a monumental breadth 
which they never remotely glimpsed. The scheme is worked 
out in magnificent oblongs varied by triangular forms which 
repeat the motive of the steps. The chief narrative motives, 
the childish determination of the Virgin, the gracious expec- 
tancy of the high priest, the admiration of the women below, 
hold their own amazingly in the vast space. The surface sings 
with color. The painting was affixed to the wall in 1538, fully 
ten years before Paolo Veronese had made this sort of pageantry 
his special domain. 

Almost as dispassionate is the great canvas, depicting Christ 
before the People (1543), at Vienna. It becomes less an 
expression of the submission of Christ than an exaltation of 
the Imperial power that has him in charge and of the mob 
spirit that cries for his blood. The architectural surroundings 
are magnificent. There are wonderful details, as in the howling 
boy at the left and the white form of a girl caught in the throng. 
Her sudden apparition as an element of relief and mystery 
anticipates by nearly a century a similar device in Rembrandt’s 
Night Watch. 

Very characteristic in its patrician decorum is The Disciples 
at Emmaus, in the Louvre, Figure 275, which was painted 
about 1545. Here there is no intensity in the moment of 
surprise and revelation. Benignly the Christ breaks bread; 
reverently and without excitement the disciples give him his: 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 407 


due worship. All the homeliness and surprise that are in St. 
Luke’s narrative, and that Rembrandt later emphasized, have 
been leveled out in the interest of discretion and nobility. 


Fic. 275. Titian. The Supper at Emmaus. — Lowvre. 


The disciples show no more enthusiasm than a Venetian digni- 
tary and prelate should. 

Two portraits which were both painted within the year 
1545 show Titian at the parting of the ways. The Aretino, 
in the Pitti Palace, the even finer sketch being in the Frick 
Collection, New York, Figure 276, reveals the truculent and 
sensual man of letters in all his formidable massiveness. The 
satin and velvets in which he is clad are painted lightly but 
with fullest regard for their textures and material beauty. Titian 
liked Aretino and had profited by his bitter and venal pen. So 
without emphasizing Aretino’s effrontery and brutality Titian 
brings out his resolute intelligence. 

In the portraits of Paul III, Figure 277, epee as in that 
scene where the decrepit Pope muses craftily between two 
smooth flatterers and traitors, his own kinsmen, the sinister 


408 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


air seems filled with contesting wills. A veil of atmosphere 
interposes itself before the figures. The touch is light, con- 
trasts are evaded, materials count for very little, there is no 


Fic. 276. Titian. Pietro Are- Fic. 277. “Vittan= Pauieuiaeand 
tino. — Frick Coll., N. Y. his Nephews. — Naples. 


copying of rich surfaces. Even the color is reduced to tones 
of gray merely warmed with reds or cooled with blues. 

In its tremulous psychology, in its reticence, in its substi- 
tute of richly broken monochrome for a gamut of real color, this 
picture is a kind of negation of everything Titian had attained. 
His remaining thirty years were given to ideals which are no 
longer bounded by the Venetian lagoon, but are as broad 
perhaps and indeterminate as the modern imagination itself. 
Before exploring this mystery of Titian’s renovation of his 
art at seventy, and since his Venetian style has closed, we may 
do well to consider some of his contemporaries at Venice and in 
Lombardy. 

Sebastiano del Piombo ? was born at Venice in 1487, and like 
most of his generation emulated the smouldering harmonies of 
Giorgione. He paints such admirable portraits as the so-called 
Fornarina, at Florence, which long passed for a Raphael. He 
soon passes from the lyrism of Giorgione to a dramatic mode ' 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 409 


quite his own. He was called to Rome, made keeper of the 
Papal Seal, became an executant of Michelangelo’s designs, 
and thus indulged a losing rivalry with Raphael. He com- 
mands a heavy dignity in his male portraits, and in his various 


Fic. 278. Palma Vecchio. Adoration of the Shepherds. — Louvre. 


pictures of the Dead Christ and Mary, attains a robust and 
telling pathos. Down to his death, in 1547, he maintained a 
tradition of Giorgionesque color in the alien air of Rome, and 
represented something of the gravity of the Venetian Renais- 
sance in a city rapidly giving itself to sensationalism. 

Palma Vecchio’ is a more considerable figure. Born at 
Serinalta amid the Bergamesque hills, in 1480, we find him at 
Venice, by 1505 among the pupils of Giovanni Bellini. Like 
the rest, he is touched by Giogione’s poetry, but on the whole 
he merely intensifies and refines upon simpler methods. He 
follows Titian in the conversation piece, and does many Arca- 
dian Holy Families which are beautifully lighted, radiantly 
colored and felt with a warmth and simplicity that just misses 
sentimentality. Among the best is the Adoration of the 
Shepherds, Figure 278, in the Louvre. 


410 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


With Titian, he loves women of generous build and he sets 
off their impressive charms by careful posing, employing all 
the new devices of counterpoise. One may see him at his 
grandest in the altar-piece of St. Barbara, 
Figure 279, painted after 1561. The saint is 
worthy to be the patroness of artillerymen. 
She holds her martyr’s palm like a field 
marshal’s baton, she is imperiously confident 
and yet gentle —a lovely Amazon of the 
Christian pantheon. 

In the Arcadian nude Palma has delicacy 
and refinement of workmanship, but the 
mood is obvious. For him beauty is literally 
skin deep, and he gives himself to the im- 
possible competition of paint with nature’s 
nacreous shades and ineffable carnations. 
But he so nearly succeeds that just as a 


Fic. 279. Palma : : , 
Vecchio—S.M. painter of lovely surfaces no Venetian painter 
Formosa. 


quite equalled him, not even Titian, and with 
this single talent Palma almost made himself a great por- 
traitist. Indeed if painting surfaces were all of portraiture, he 
would be the greatest portraitist of the Renaissance. But his 
big, blond models lose condition in his hands. Charming as is 
such a group as the Three Graces at Dresden, or the dozen or 
more single portraits of men and women, they lack the last 
quality of distinction. He tries to gain it by adopting rather 
overtly the pathos and wistfulness of Giorgione, but it doesn’t 
suit his exquisitely groomed cavaliers nor yet their even more 
exquisitely groomed and most ample light o’loves. Indeed, 
despite a handful of superb portraits, Palma has ever the air 
rather of a consummate beauty doctor than that of a great 
artist. However that be, his influence was widespread 
throughout Northern Italy, and especially around his native 
Bergamo. He died in 1528, leaving a Veronese pupil, Boni- ° 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 411 


fazio, to complete his unfinished canvases and to carry on ta 
the middle of the century his brilliant and gentle style. Within 
his narrow range Palma is admirable, never uneasy, never 
below himself. In his unperturbed Arcadianism and even in 
his harmless sentimentalism, in his delicacy and robustness, 
he seems more Venetian than the Venetians themselves. 

Composure is the very soul of the grand style whether in 
fifth century Athens or in sixteenth century Florence, Rome, 
or Venice. It accepts the human spectacle as worthy and 
thrilling, admires without misgivings the best things that 
come before its eye. That is why radicals hate the grand 
style — and rightly, for it is always aristocratic, caring rather 
little for the average man and much for that privileged remnant 
which lives in highest bodily eficiency and mental ease. The 
grand style is on the side of what Matthew Arnold called the 
barbaric virtues of wealth, health, and generous living. The 
moment the artist begins to question the social order, to be 
curious about the foibles and fates of individuals as such, the 
grand style is in peril. This delicate and inquisitive sensibility 
makes its appearance in Italy not long after the death of 
Raphael. You will find it in Pontormo, at Florence, in Lorenzo 
Lotto, in the Venetic region, in Moretto of Brescia, above all 
in Correggio, more assertively in Tintoretto, and latent in 
Titian’s last phase. It is a tremor on the sea of history that 
heralds a new dawn. 

Lorenzo Lotto,®> born at Treviso in 1480, first and most 
characteristically embodies the new intimacy. He worked 
widely through Lombardy and the Marches, enjoying a tran- 
sitory vogue at Venice. Trained in the austere methods of 
-Alvise Vivarini, he soon gave himself to his own native melan- 
choly. One may see his qualities and defects in the great 
Enthroned Madonna, in San Bartolommeo at Bergamo. Mr. 
Berenson has well remarked that the saints are no longer demi- 
gods and objects of worship, but ‘pious souls in whose faces 


AI2 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


and gestures we discern the zeal, the fervor, the yearning, the 
reverie, or even the sentimental ecstacy peculiar to the several 
temperaments most frequently occurring among the children 
of Holy Mother Church.” Note too how the stately architec- 


Fic. 280. Lorenzo Lotto. Adoration of the Shepherds. — Brescia. 


ture derived from Giovanni Bellini and the crowded figure 
group mutually dwarf one another. Intimacy and monumen- 
tality do not live well together. This picture was finished 
in 1516, the year that Titian began the Assumption. Does not 
the contrast show Lotto an alien in his time and a harbinger 
of ours? In later pictures of less monumental pretensions, 
— as ina Nativity, Figure 280, at Brescia, which may profitably 
be contrasted with Palma’s more assured version, — he attains 
a penetrating beauty of a morbid kind, and his sensitiveness 
makes him a most appealing portraitist. He has left an extra- - 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 413 


ordinary gallery of shy, inadequate, sometimes morose and 
invalid men, and women, Figure 281. They have not the con- 
fidence of the Renaissance, but hesitations like our own. 
Which shows perhaps that the Renaissance mood was ever 


Fic. 281. Lorenzo Lotto. The Marriage Yoke. — Madrid. 


urban and the affair of a minority of statesmen, merchants 
and humanists. In the little cities where there was no en- 
lightened court the human spirit retained and betrayed its 
immemorial frailties and misgivings. Lotto died in 1556, having 
widely diffused his sensitive art through the Marca and Lom- 
bardy. 

It is significantly the provincial painters and not the born 
Venetians who indulge these quite feminine refinements of 
sensibility. Such a one is Moretto of Brescia, born in 1498 and 
active until 1555. Although closely in touch with Palma and 
Titian, he avoids their positive color and dreams his pictures 


AI4 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


in delicate harmonies of silver and blue. There is a morning 


coolness about them which anticipates certain perfections of 


Fic. 282. Moretto of Brescia. Ma- 
donna with St. Nicholas.— Brescia. 


early Velasquez and even of the 
figure painting of Corot. He is 
a distinguished spirit but an 
anomaly in the age of Aretino. 
Milton would have understood 
him. In portraiture, as in the 
richly clad nobleman of the 
National Gallery, he forcés the 
note of picturesqueness to rest- 
lessness. In such religious pic- 
tures as the Madonna in Glory, 
(1540), in San Giorgio Mag- 
giore, at Verona, or in the Ma- 
donna with St. Nicholas, at 
Brescia, (1539), Figure 282, he 


shows an ecstatic lyrical feeling, and finds the free and florid 
compositional forms to express it. It has an informality 


Fic. 283. 


Correggio. Detail of Ceiling. — Convent of S. Paolo, Parma. 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 415 


which Titian would never have permitted himself at this 
moment. 

Of course the greatest of those who in the name of sentiment 
undermined the grand style was 
Antonio Correggio,® a provincial 
painter, a disappointed and un- 
successful man, who lived out 
his less than fifty short years 
(1489 !—1534) in or near Parma. 
His ideas he took from Man- 
tegna, master of all Northern 
Italy, whose illusionism he car- 
ried a point further. .He made 
in 1518 for the ceiling of the 
reception room of the Convent 
Oisaiee aglome figtire 283, a 


trellis through the verdurous 


; Fic. 284. Correggio. St. Augus- 
ovals of which one sees pairs of tine. Fresco. Toschi’s Copy. — 


1 Cath 1eP : 
nude boy geniuses at play. He athedral, Parma 


paints away the domes of the Church of San Giovanni (1524) 
and of the Cathedral (1530), shows us Christ or His 
Mother soaring into the clouds with hosts of accompanying 
angels. He brings the clouds down through the painted wall 
and sets them before the pendentives. Church Doctors, Fig- 
ure 284, or Evangelists ride their cloud-thrones easily in the 
company of the fairest nude angels of either sex. The painting 
fairly annuls the architecture. These decorative frescoes are 
so vital and so richly various that they demand admiration 
and disarm criticism. To walk among the demi-gods and 
goddesses that loll on the parapet painted about the Cathedral 
dome, Figure 285, is to have known the company of Homer’s 
immortals. The impression is over-powering and unforgettable. 
Cautious people have always resented such profusion and such 
unrestrained assertion of life and joy. At the time they called 


416 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the dome, with its confusion of wriggling rosy legs of ascending 
angels, the ‘‘frog pond.” They cavilled at Correggio’s price 
and appealed to Titian, who knowing a miracle of fine workman- 


Fic. 285. Correggio. Detail of fresco decoration of Dome of the Cathe- 
dral. After Toschi’s Copy. — Parma. 


ship, told them that if they turned the dome over and filled 
it with ducats, it would not be too much. 

It was Correggio’s distinction to fill an immense decoration 
with lyrical ecstacy. Michelangelo in the ceiling of the Sistine 
Chapel had done as much in elegiac vein. Both set a destruc- 
tive example to smaller men who followed. For two centuries 
after Correggio’s death in 1534 the clouds blew into churches, 
and rosy angelic apparitions cooled their nude charms in these 
clouds and dangled their delicate legs therefrom, and painters 
worked their will upon mere architecture, and the baroque style 
took possession of all Catholic Europe. At its best it is capti- 
vating even to an unwilling Protestant imagination, but it 
never regained the height of its beginnings in Correggio. 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 417 


In his religious pieces and mythologies, Correggio is respect- 


ful to the grand style. He had in one way or another taken 


account of his Titian, Raphael, 
and Michelangelo, and he builds 
his groups in their active sym- 
metries. But such an allegiance 
to the decorous style is merely 
superficial, his affinities are with 
the following centuries and the 
devotees of sensibility. Even in 
a grandly composed picture like 
the Holy Family called The Day, 
Figure 286, the women are dis- 
quieting in their personal love- 
liness. There is no relation to 
the Parthenon marbles, as there 
always seems to be in Titian, no 
suggestion of a larger air. These 
Maries know love, and raptures 


Fic. 286. Correggio. “The Day.” 
— Parma. 


and tears. In the somewhat earlier Marriage of St. Catherine, 
Figure 287, at Paris, the mood is simply one of great tender- 


ness. 


In later pictures like the 


Fic. 287. Correggio. Marriage 
of St. Catherine. — Louvre. 


Madonna with St George and 
the Holy Night, at Dresden, the 
excitement of all the figures 
becomes almost unpleasant. So, 
in the mythologies, Leda, or 
Danae, or Antiope, Figure 288, 
is not goddesslike but perturb- 
ingly feminine and desirable. A 
most delicate erotic appeal is in 
all this work. It is like Alex- 
andrian sculpture. It is. still 
noble, but less so than Titian or 


418 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Raphael, less abstract and stylistic. The exquisite ambiguity 
of the mood is not quite compatible with the compositional 
formulas. One feels it is but a step and a legitimate one from 
Correggio to the rare, senti- 
mental nudes of Gainsborough 
and Sir Joshua and Romney. 
In every phase Correggio’s 
work is distinguishable by the 
most beautiful handling of color 
and light and dark. Like Mo- 
retto and Lotto he prefers a 
blonder scale than the Vene- 
tian, and makes his surfaces 
so many miracles of ivory, sil- 
very grays and straw yellows, 
invested with shadow tenuously 


2 modulated, yet of strongest 
Fic. 288. Correggio. Jupiter and modelling power. He cares noth- 

SED SEI? ing about textures or individ- 
ually rich passages; it is the whole picture that counts. The 
brush sweeps lightly and swiftly, there is no loading of color, 
everywhere an exquisite economy and a subtlety that con- 
ceals itself. At all points, technically as well as psycholog- 
ically, Correggio deals in overtones. And by that token he 
is not of the Renaissance, but is greater or smaller than it, as 
you may choose to decide. He is more our contemporary than 


he is Titian’s. 


Meanwhile Titian himself is passing into a subjective phase. 
In 1545 he was at Rome. Michelangelo, who offered him un- 
usual courtesies, doubtless showed him the Sistine ceiling 
and the recently finished Last Judgment. Titian, as he 
writes himself, studied with humble amazement the ‘‘mar-. 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 419 


vellous old stones” that the Roman soil was yielding up to 
the newly founded museums. 

Even before the Roman trip, his style begins to show an old 
man’s restless vehemence. ‘The titanic ceiling decorations 
for the Salute, of 1543 and 1544, Abraham and Isaac, Cain and 
Abel, David and Goliath, dis- 
play at once an almost sensa- 
tional energy and a lesser regard 
for the superficial attractions of 
color. The rugged designs are 
hacked out in bold splotches of 
light and dark. The method 
begins to be luministic. The 
partial foreshortening of the 
figures to adjust them to being 
seen from below is the dec- 
orative compromise which pre- 


vails at Venice from Tintoretto Fic. 289. Titian. Charles V. at 
to Tiepolo. The new point of SE oer alias 

view is easiest studied in Christ crowned with Thorns, in the 
Louvre. ‘Titian passes swiftly through this overtly dramatic 
stage. The same year, 1548, that saw the Crowning with 
Thorns, saw also the equestrian portrait of Charles V, Con- 
queror, Figure 289, after the battle of Mihlberg. What is odd 
about the picture is the elimination of all military conventions 
—no battle reek, no stricken foes, no busy staff. Instead just 
the pale, inflexible, thoughtful face of a slight old man, physi- 
cally frail but firmly seated on a cantering horse. There is 
no frank color except the purple scarf and the gold of armor 
and horse trappings. Everything is expressed in marvellous 
grays and browns which contain hints of all the colors. There 
is no linear drawing; edge melts into edge without abrupt con- 
trasts. A twilight mystery, a veiled quality, adds immensely 
to the expression of melancholy and might. The mere spec- 


420 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


tacle of life has become relatively uninteresting to Titian. 
He rather meditates on those creative throes of the mind which 
underlie action. His conqueror is a thinker. 

In Titian’s own portrait, of 1550, at Berlin, the new method 


Fic. 290. Titian. The Rape of Europa. — Mrs. Fohn L. Gardner, 


Boston. 


is more strongly announced. The form grows out of a silvery 
gloom by reason of hesitating flickers of light which yet have 
extraordinary modelling power. In character the work is 
remarkable. One senses smouldering under the weathered 
surfaces of this man of seventy-three the most formidable 
capacities for wrath and for passion. 

The nudes and mythologies of these final years, the various 
Danae’s and the Nymph and Faun at Vienna, the Calisto 
and Actzon at Bridgewater House, the Venus and Adonis 
at Madrid, all show a very different temper from the early 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 421 


poesies. ‘There is no suggestion of meditative dalliance, no 
shy Arcadianism. These are mortals stung and lashed by 
desire. Love is not sweet on their lips but bitter and fateful. 
Even Europa, Figure 290, at Fenway Court, the finest of these 
later poesies, seems to fill the sunlight sky and sea with a 
spasm of erotic expectancy. Passion becomes cosmic. Strange 
capacities for tenderness also appear. Compare the Deposition 


Fic. 291. Titian. The Entombment. — Madrid. 


in the Prado, Figure 291, of 1559, with the masterpiece of 
forty years earlier, Figure 273, at the Louvre. ‘The noble dome- 
like arrangement persists, but within the compositional dome 
what a change! The body of the Christ is no longer grandly 
disposed. It crumples as it is turned into the tomb. ‘The thing 
has the unexpectedness of fact. The canvas is soberly in- 
candescent with half-lit faces which gleam through the deep 
grays and browns. Each light is a focus of compassion. 


422 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Titian himself, impersonating St. Joseph of fnimauteas supports 
the Christ. 

In one of the latest poesies, the Education of Cupid, Figure 
2027 at the Borghese, Rome, the new method may be studied. 


Fic. 292. Titian. Education of Cupid. — Borghese, Rome. 


The forms are built up of little and apparently indeterminate “ 
touches of russets and grays that glow from within. The form 
builds itself out vibratingly. It is no longer as palpable to 
the hand as that of the early Titians, but it is more palpable 
to the eye and to the mind. Tone has driven out color; at- 
mospheric envelopment has replaced minute description; the 
artist merely creates gradations of light which afford the il- 
lusion of bulk. It is what we call today, rather loosely, im- 
pressionism, or, more accurately, luminism. In the character 
of these goddesses we have no longer wistfulness, that inef- 
fable adolescent quality of Titian’s early poesies, but women 
fully conscious of their power to give or take away. 

His later pictures, The Crowning with Thorns at Munich 
(1570) and the Pieta (1576) in the Venice Academy, are 


nobly tragic in mood. Titian faces the last great event not 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 423 


as a humanist, but as a humble believer sorrowing in the 
suffering of his Lord. Carried off by the plague in 1576, Titian 
had lived nearly a century, for over seventy years had been a 
famous painter. In that long course there is no sign of failure 
of power. His dominant mood changes according to his age 
from the ardent pastoralism of his early maturity, through 
the dramatic energy of his middle age, and the impersonal 
splendor of his first old age. And when he had passed: the 
scriptural term, he developed new depths of feeling, and 
created to contain them a pulsating realm of light and dark in 
twilight. He had begun with the cool preciseness of Giovanni 
Bellini and closed with a passionate mystery of expression 
which foretells Rembrandt. So far as Venice was concerned, 
he not merely led its Renaissance, but was its Renaissance, 
both in rise and decay. And it is noteworthy that while 
Raphael and Michelangelo end in ostentation of power and de- 
cline of feeling, Titian ends in deeper capacities whether for 
passion or sympathy, works away from the daylight realities 
of humanism towards new depths in natural appearance and 
new depths in his own soul. 


Around such a man a throng of able painters naturally 
grew up. The poorest imitated him, the better took hints 
from his marvellous practice and went their own way. Among 
these was Giambattista Moroni of Bergamo, born in 1520 and 
trained under Moretto of Brescia. Mediocre as a religious 
painter, he was a portraitist of acutest vision for character. 
A provincial, he cared little for the idealizations of the time. 
In such a portrait as the Tailor, at London, or the amazing 
old Abbess in the Metropolitan Museum, or the Husband and 
Wife, at Cleveland, or The Widower, at Dublin, Figure 293, 
he gives us the very look of people, even to their uneasiness 
as they submit to the ordeal of being portrayed, and withal 


424 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


their intelligence, diligence, and patience. Titian, when over- 
driven with portrait commissions, habitually referred his clients 
to Moroni, as an abler artist in the specialty. And indeed 
Moroni, while lacking Titian’s 
style, looked harder at his sit- 
ters than Titian ever did. He 
died in 1572, four years before 
his generous friend. 

The Bassanos, the father 
Jacopo and his sons Leandro 
and Francesco, were too popular 
to be omitted. Their style is 
pretty eclectic with something of 
late Titian and Tintoretto in it. 


They treat the old _ religious 
: themes, are good portraitists, 

w Ahisower. Dubin, and eaeyieon ta 
tiative a bucolic sort of painting, 

with abundant horses, cattle and dogs. So homely a tradi- 
tion has its place in breaking down the decorum of the grand 
style. The excellent average of the family in their craft may 


be judged from Leandro’s Pieta, at Cleveland. 


Sometimes over the velvety calm of Venice and the lagoon 
will roll up a thunder storm. ‘The radiant color becomes more 
sombrely rich under the tossing clouds. Their steely edges 
break into the lightning flash; domes and towers for a moment 
stagger under the lashing of the rain squall. The storm passes, 
the leaden clouds show saffron backs against the blue, the 
evening is here with double serenity and purity. Such is 
Jacopo Tintoretto amid the reflective tranquility, and confi- 
dent splendors of Venetian painting —a wind of the spirit, 
a shattering, yet consoling, apparition. Tenderness, tragedy,- 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 425 


romance, are his realm. Where his contemporaries dealt in 
superb averages, he deals in transcendent exceptions. Thus 
he has ever been a baffling figure to the critics. For the febrile 
Ruskin, he is among the greatest of painters; for the coolly 


Fic. 294. ‘Tintoretto. Tithonus and Aurora. Tempera color sketch. 
— British Museum. 


analytical Kenyon Cox, he is little better than a reckless sen- 
sationalist. Every one, friend or foe of his art, must admit 
its Shakespearean richness and variety. He lacks Titian’s 
Olympian poise, but is more universal. 

Jacopo Robusti,’ the dyer’s son, was born in Venice in 1518. 
At seventeen he was put with Titian. Once passing through 
the studio Titian saw on the floor a number of Tintoretto’s 
sketches. Not trusting himself to speak, he sent word that 
the new comer should never again enter his studio. An act 
which contemporary gossip ascribed to jealousy, is rather to 
be referred to disgust at Tintoretto’s unbridled vehemence. 
Whoever has studied Tintoretto’s tempera sketches, Figure 
294, in the British Museum may realize how Titian felt. The 


426 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


sketches are superb, but Titian in 1535 was in no way to realize 
their value. Twenty years later he may have appreciated them. 

Driven out by the best master in Venice, Tintoretto was 
reduced to the process of self-education, in which he was 


Fic. 295. Tintoretto. Presentation of Virgin in the Temple. —S. M. 
dell’ Orto. 


aided by that brilliant decorative colorist and ever luckless 
artist, Andrea Schiavone. ‘Tintoretto’s earliest work of note 
is the decoration of his own parish church of the Orto, which 
he undertook about the year 1546 for the costs. The gigantic 
canvases of the Deluge and Worship of the Golden Calf in the 
Choir made his fame, but we see his peculiar quality better in 
the Presentation in the Temple, Figure 295. It was finished 
only a few years after Titian’s masterpiece in the Scuola della 
Carita, hence the contrast between the two works on the same. 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 4.27 
theme is enlightening. Titian’s picture is fundamentally a 
spectacle and a ceremony. Everything goes as arranged and 
expected. ‘lintoretto’s picture is a sudden and thrilling event 
full of unexpected graces. The little Virgin is well within the 
picture, but keeps her prominence through her position against 
the sky and even more by reason of the focusing of intense in- 
terest on her by all the persons in the composition. It is a 
charming invention that three mothers and their infant 
daughters on the steps should share in the glory of her conse- 
cration. At the left a prophetic figure suddenly grasps the im- 
port of the moment and sways with wide stretched arms to- 
wards the hope. From him to the head of the steps rises a 
pathetic line of cripples and beggars mercifully veiled in half 
light. These are witnesses to the human misery that the Virgin 
through her Son is to assuage. The unifying principle, apart 
from the fine linear design, is the light which floods out of the 
picture over the beautifully carved steps. Everything is con- 
ceived in depth, while Titian’s Presentation is relatively on one 
plane. Golden browns and yellows of great luminosity are 
prevailing colors, the crimsons and blues serving merely as 
relief and accent. With all its richness of illustrative content, 
the thing is a noble decoration. 

A little later, perhaps in 1548, Tintoretto did the first of 
three canvases for the Scuola Grande di San Marco. It repre- 
sents the moment when a Christian slave is about to be brained. 
The liberating figure of St. Mark, Figure 296, swoops down, 
the maul snaps in the executioner’s hand. With a singular 
delicacy the entire interest of the bystanders is concentrated 
on the helpless white body of the martyr. ‘The suspense is 
- breathless. Only the old magistrate high at the right has seen 
the miraculous breaking of the executioner’s sledge. His 
gesture carries the eye to the figure of the downward swooping 
saint, thus the most sensational feature is last seen and comes 
as a climax. Such dramatic modulations are of the very es- 


428 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


sence of Tintoretto’s genius. Again, though the sweeping 
curves of the linear design are splendidly balanced, the light 
is the ultimate harmonizer. It ripples out in an increasing 
wave towards the spectator, kindling as it goes the colors of 


Fic. 296. Tintoretto. Miracle of the Slave. — Venice. 


rich stuffs and the bronzed or pearly roundings of brows, 
shoulders, throats and limbs. The carrying of a uni- 
form rhythm of motion through earth and sky is again Tin- 
toretto’s invention. He uses it here as elsewhere not as a 
sprightly device — which was later the baroque attitude — 
but as a necessary factor in emotional expression. 

In 1561 Tintoretto finished the great Marriage at Cana for 
the Salute. The picture is tremendously developed in depth, 
and the Christ is set in the distance. The foreground figures 
alone are concerned with the miracle. Very effective is the 
contrast of the quiet feasters with those who are stirred by 
the marvel. The lighting is consummately fine. There are 
passages of extreme loveliness, such as the swaying row of 
women’s faces on the right of the table, but the whole thing is 
far from clear; illustrative and decorative features are im- 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 429 


perfectly harmonized. In this great scale Tintoretto’s richness 
and insatiate inventiveness tend to work against him. 

Before considering his colossal labor in the School of St. 
Roch, we should note his avowed ideal. It might be read on 
the walls of his studio: ‘The Drawing of Michelangelo and 
the Coloring of Titian.”’ In the studio were casts of Michel- 
angelo’s sculptures brought up at great expense from Florence 
and Rome. And to Michelangelo we owe the slender and alert 
proportions of Tintoretto’s figures, quite different as they are 
from the gravity, almost ponderosity of Titian, Palma, and 
Paolo Veronese. The color is based on late Titian, but is more 
sonorous, simple, and uncomplicated by minor tones. The 
brush stroke is unlike anything earlier — sketchy, impetuous, 
definitive, working by first intention. Accordingly the sur- 
faces are much broken, and, to a near view, lack preciousness. 
We have neither the fluent enamel of Giorgione and early 
Titian, nor yet the muffled richness of Titian’s later manner. 
But in the best Tintorettos the touch is infallibly crisp, right 
and expressive. To exaggerate these generously avowed in- 
fluences of the master who repudiated him and the master 
he never saw would be easy. As a matter of fact, Tintoretto 
is always more the illustrator than either of his models. If 
he adopts the grand poses of Michelangelo, he does so not 
for abstract beauty, but ever seeks a motive for them. If 
he chooses Michelangelo’s slender, athletic proportions, he in- 
vests them with tenderness and enthusiasm. Unlike Titian, he 
avoids both classical draperies and rich contemporary costumes, 
choosing compromise forms of dress which, without ceasing 
to be classical, should seem familiar, and fit for a real world. 
‘If he adopts Titian’s coruscating light, he gives it a special 
poetry. It does not glow evenly through the picture, but 
flashes intermittently, as an accent or accompaniment to 
emotion. 

In 1560 the famous charitable confraternity of St. Roch 


430 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


determined to decorate their beautiful School. They called 
Federico Zuccaro, and Francesco Salviati, who had Roman 
honors, Tintoretto, and his friends, Schiavone and Paolo 
~ Veronese. The subject in competition was to be a cartoon of 
St. Roch in glory for the ceiling of the refectory. When the 
day came, Tintoretto unveiled not a cartoon but the finished 
oval. That was his drawing, he said; he hoped they would 
not be offended, but he knew no other way. The misunder- 
standings due to this summary procedure were soon cleared 
up. Tintoretto became titular painter to the School, later 
a member, and worked at the two great halls and ante-rooms 
for twenty-eight years. 

St. Roch was the Physician Saint who cared for the plague 
stricken. Thus the upper hall was pictured with examples of 
miraculous mercy and deliverance chosen from the Old Testa- 
ment. The lower hall was devoted to the more familiar 
stories of the life of Christ and of His Mother. Sadly darkened 
and neglected, often in impossible light, these pictures baffle 
all but the enthusiast. One needs all the vicarious enthusiasm 
that may be drawn from a Ruskin to do San Rocco with any 
thoroughness. Whoever persists will be rewarded, for while 
Tintoretto is by no means at his greatest as a painter in this 
work, it reveals his inexhaustible inventiveness, his warmth and 
tenderness, and power, as no other series does, whereas it has 
in the little moonlit landscapes with St. Mary Magdalen 
and St. Mary of Egypt faery refinements elsewhere lack- 
ing in the master. 

Everybody knows at least the great Calvary, with its 
sense of cosmic disaster. Marvellous is the storm which 
sweeps towards the cross from behind, superb alike the 
cluster of faithful friends at the foot of the cross and the 
proud riders at the flanks. Hate, love and indifference mingle 
in the scene. It gets its profound tragedy on terms of fact, 
is free from all mystical sentimentality. What was it like on 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 431 


that awful evening? is the only question the artist asks himself, 
and his answer, a sheer gift of the imagination, transcends all 
the lyrical sweetness and measured solemnity of the ritual 
crucifixions. Humanism and re- 
ligion unite for once in this mas- 
terpiece. 

Among the scores of narratives 
in the two halls the eye will rest 
upon Moses Smiting the Rock, 
for its majesty; upon the meeting 
of Mary and Elizabeth which 
has the intensity of Ghiotto’s 
fresco at neighboring Padua, with 
an abandon all its own; upon the 
Flight into Egypt, with its 
idyllic landscape; upon the aw- 
ful tumult and despair of the 
Massacre of the Innocents; upon 
the pathos of the white-robed 
Christ, awaiting his doom from 
an indifferent proconsul. These 


occur among many that are 
equally memorable. Perhaps the Mane 

” ; Fic. 297. Tintoretto. Christ 
subtle humanism of Tintoretto Tempted by uSataneaeseuens 
is best shown in the Temptation di S. Rocco. 

of Christ, Figure 297. Instead of the ignoble bat-like Satan of 
the medieval painters, we have a magnificent starry-eyed 
youth, a veritable genius of the pride of life. With out- 
stretched, generous arms he offers unstinted power and pleas- 
ure. The Christ regards him with tranquil kindness, as one 
might a splendid animal fawning too eagerly. For so Christian 
a man as Tintoretto, it implies extraordinary sympathy to 
imagine a Satan in his own way gloriously sure of his case. 
In these compositions the method is most various. But 


432 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


where there are many figures Tintoretto generally avoids 
the convention of placing the chief personages on the picture 
plane. You look over heads or between bodies to glimpse the 
Saints or the Blessed Virgin or Christ. And curiously this 
procedure does not confuse the eye. On the contrary these 
apparently casual but really most thoughtful arrangements 
heighten the sense of reality; one feels like a witness, like 
one himself on the edges of the throng. 

Along with the decoration of San Rocco, Tintoretto under- 
took frequent commissions for the Ducal Palace. But the 
fire of 1577 consumed his picture of the naval victory 
at Lepanto, with much else. In the mythologies of the Anti- 
collegio painted in 1578 we have the loveliest poesies of the 
Venetian school. These are the Marriage of Bacchus and 
Ariadne, Mercury and the Graces, Minerva expelling Mars 
and the Forge of Vulcan. From the point of view both 
of decoration and sentiment these are perhaps the finest 
nudes in painting. They glow with outdoor health, the 
firm wholesome bodies sway from sheer joy in motion, or 


hover lightly in the limpid air. The noble forms are fixed for — 


us in transparent shadows, and broad dapplings of light. 
There is little of the sheer dreaminess of Giorgione, who yet 
counts for something in the work, nor yet of the explicit sen- 
suousness of Titian. These noble creatures go about our 
business, — marrying, seeking grace in life, composing strife, 
providing munitions should strife arise. Miss Phillipps is 
probably right in divining here an allegory of the greatness of 
Venice, bride of the Adriatic, protected by her diplomacy, ad- 


mired for her arts, yet ever ready in her arsenals. What is 


better worth noting is the combination of breadth and deli- 


cacy in the finest of these poesies, [he Marriage of Bacchus ~ 


and Ariadne, Figure 298. The interlocking of the superb 
forms in a flowing rhythm or pattern, the technical miracle of 


Venus’s easy turn in the air as she offers the ring and the ~ 


weed =< 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 433 


starry crown, the exquisite alternations of light and_ half 
light others might conceivably have invented. What is proper 
to Tintoretto and to him alone is the hesitating hand of 
Ariadne and her almost resigned and reluctant acceptance of 


Fic. 298. Tintoretto. Bacchus and Ariadne. — 
Ducal Palace. 


a new love, being mindful of love once betrayed. Also the 


delicacy of Bacchus’s ardent gesture, as knowing himself 
to be not only wooer but consoler, is purest ‘Tintoretto. 
The picture with its companion pieces is the effulgent after- 
glow of the Arcadianism that began with Giorgione. It 
breathes a charm that has never since been fully recoverable. 
_ While these poesies were in progress, about 1575, lintoretto 
painted for the Church of San Cassiano the most original of 
his Crucifixions, Figure 299. One looks over the narrow 
top of Golgotha to a peaceful expanse of marbled evening 
sky. The heads and serried pikes of the Roman legionaries 
suggest a throng behind the hill. The sharpest note of color 
is a banner, and the purple robe just stripped from the Christ. 


434. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Between John and Mary and the executioners on the ladder 
and against the sky the strangest episode passes. It is the 
moment when a Pharisee hands up to the executioner the 
mocking placard “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.” 


Fic. 299. Tintoretto. Calvary. — S. Cassiano. 


With a sudden impulse John points out the act to Mary, to 
console her. Christ’s enemies affirm the truth of him. Even 
in the hour of defeat and death he is eternally his people’s 
king. The level light which ripples softly over the nude 
forms of Christ and the thieves takes away all harshness. 
At San Rocco Tintoretto presented an epic and cosmic 
terror. Here he suggests all the intimate and lyrical hopes 
that have grown out of the sacrifice on Calvary. 

Like all the Venetians Tintoretto was an admirable por- 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 435 


traitist. His sober and powerful vein is well shown in the 
Madonna with Three Magistrates, Figure 300. 

Among the later altar-pieces none is finer than the Miracle 
of St. Agnes in the Orto. It has all of Tintoretto’s sweetness, 


Fic. 300. Tintoretto. Madonna with Three Magistrates. — Venice. 


power and suddenness, and is nearly in its original condition 
of color. In 1587, being nearly seventy years old, he got the 
commission for his greatest and perhaps his last picture, the 
Paradise, in the Hall of the Great Council in the Ducal 
Palace. Darkened and dried, it is still to the perceptive 
observer a billowing sea of rapturous faces of the blest, obey- 
ing in its widening circles of cloud-borne angels an oceanic 
rhythm. During the three years that Tintoretto was paint- 
ing it, his young daughter and comrade, Marietta, dressed 
like a Shakespearean page for greater convenience, worked and 
chattered beside him on the scaffolding. She hardly lived to 
see the great canvas set on its wall. Tintoretto lived on till 
1594, and then his aged and withered body was carried across 
the canal from his palace to his vault in the Orto. Such 
friends as Schiavone and Paolo Veronese had gone before him, 
the old merrymakings and impromptu concerts in -his home 
had ceased. It was a very tired old man who bid his sons con- 
tinue the honorable trade of painting. He had shared nobly 
the greatest range of human emotions, and his last artistic 
vision was of an ecstatic peace in Paradise. 


436 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


After Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese’ seems an anti-climax. 
His imagination is very limited. His greatest pictures treat 
the sole theme. of stately feasts. His soul is that of a very 
high class society editor. But no well-advised person looks 
to Paolo Veronese for soul. One rather seeks in him judgment 
and fine painting. Both are at their maximum. 

Paolo Caliari was born at Verona in 1528, trained by a half 
primitive master, Antonio Badile, and influenced by the ener- 
getic compositions of Brusasorci. Paolo inherited the long 
Veronese tradition for spectacular narrative painting with 
splendid architectural accessories, and he carries the local tradi- 
tion to its close and height. He came to Venice at twenty- 
seven, a finished and famous artist, bringing with him a novel 
sort of color. He avoids the contrasts and keen resonances of 
the true Venetians, painting rather in luminous half tones 
based on gray and blue. His forms are rich and solid with- 
out heavy shadow, and his canvases have the generally blond 
and uniform color quality of the modern out-of-door school. 

His preference is for feasts and pageants.- We have the 
spectacle of a rich and gentle society, dignified in its pleasures” 
and resplendent in its costume. Gold brocade sets off the 
pearly skins of the portly and gracious ladies in his pictures, 
and their cavaliers are as magnificently clad in satins, velvets 
and furs. The feasts are generally half out of doors in great 
colonnades, with the light glinting impartially upon fair throats 
and faces and upon channeled columns and sculptured balus- — 
trades. Behind, pale cornices and spires swim against a blue 
sky. 

It was the habit of the wealthy chapters of monks who 
maintained the great Venetian churches to paint in their 
refectories some Scriptural feast, as a warrant perhaps for 
their own daily convivialities. Earlier, the most solemn of 
all meals, The Last Supper, would have been chosen. Not so 
with Veronese and his contemporaries. They chose instead 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 437 


the Marriage at Cana or the Feast in the House of Simon or 
of Levi, Figure 301, — splendid events of small or only inci- 
dental religious significance, and treated merely as contem- 
porary banquets. 

Of the four great feasts painted by Paolo Veronese the 


Fic. 301. Paolo Veronese. Feast in Levi’s House. — Venice. 


Marriage at Cana, in the Louvre, painted in 1563, is earli- 
est, and most imposing. It builds up indefinitely from the 
marble pavement, with tier upon tier of people, clinging 
to columns and peering from balconies. One may count no 
less than two hundred and fifty heads. It has all the stir of 
a public banquet and everywhere the greatest richness of table 
accessories and constumes. The theme called for little reli- 
gious emotion. The miracle itself is a convivial one. Yet 
Veronese has made this different from other feasts by a most 
complicated system of guiding lines which always lead the 
eye to the gentle face of the Christ in the centre. He fairly 
dominates all this animation and splendor. In the trio of 
musicians in the foreground Veronese has given us a precious 
hint of the part music played in the life of all Venetian artists. 
Paolo himself plays the viola, Tintoretto the ’cello, and Titian 
the bass. What is remarkable about the great canvas is its 
unity. Bathed in equable cool light, the eye takes it in at a 


438 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


glance; there is no confusing or distracting emphasis; the 
whole thing is nobly tranquillizing. 

In 1569 Veronese was in Rome. We may possibly see some 
slight influence of Michelangelo 
in the frescoes of the Villa Bar- 
baro, at Maser. These contain 
the only nudes of Veronese that 
have a real athleticism, and the 
whole decoration has a more 
positive and sprightly spirit than 
is usual in Veronese’s placid 
style. Working in a country 

“house for liberal and congenial 

patrons, Daniele Barbaro was 
himself an architect of merit, 
Veronese sheds something of 
that professional dignity which 
is sometimes excessive in his 
Fic. 302. Paolo Veronese. Mar-. oficial work. 

riage of St. Catherine. — Santa Among his numerous altar- 


Caterina. : : 
pieces, the Marriage of St. Cath- 
erine, Figure 302, in the Venetian Church of that name is per- 


haps the most gracious. The women are adorable — hot- 
house flowers, incredible for poise, hue and delicate sur- 
face bloom. They are not very personal, their charm is a 
social one. But they are very gentle, reasonably unconscious 
of their own beauty, and quite unforgettably lovely. It 
took a wonderful eye to see them at once so simple and so 
regal. 

In the last twelve years of his life, Veronese was constantly 
employed in the Ducal Palace and the adjoining public build-— 
ings. He employed assistants freely, and the work affords dif- 
ficult critical problems. The work is uneven. In mythology 
he belies the hopes based on the frescoes at Maser, where it 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 439 


seemed as if he too might attain the Olympian mood. It is 
sadly lacking in the hoydenish group that enacts Europa and 
the Bull, Figure 303, in the Ducal Palace. Why are these 


Fic. 303. Paolo Veronese. Rape of Europa. — Ducal Palace. 


heavy Venetian lasses risking their skins and skirts and 
shins near the seaside and a bull? The flat prose of the 
feeling, or rather the absence of any real feeling, makes one 
forget the splendor of the painting. Such also is the effect of 
the superbly painted Venus and Mars, at New York, and of 
most of the mythologies. We have to do with sheer prose and 
not very sincere prose at that. 

When, however, the theme can be drawn from everyday 
Venice, Veronese is overpoweringly fine. Again and again 
in looking at the ceilings of the Ducal Palace one catches 
his breath before such visions of magnificence as Venice as 
Justice, Figure 304, Venice as Queen of the World. For all its 


440 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


contemporary quality, it attains a strange other-worldliness. 
It is as 1f some one had looked at superb Venice through a 
magnifying glass that ennobled the forms and greatly en- 
hanced the colors. You feel how 
Veronese loved it all and how 
little he cared for anything be- 
yond the splendor, dignity and 
prosperity of his adoptive city. 
He gives us the look of Venice 
at her climax of Renaissance 
glory, as Carpaccio had given the 
dying radiance of her medieval 
estate. From the point of view 
of judgment, style and fine 
craftsmanship, it is impossible to 


overpraise Veronese. He should 


Fic. 304. Paolo Veronese. Ven- 
ice attended by Force and Jus- ; : 
tice. Ceiling Panel.— Ducal painter in the narrower sense 
Palace. 


be regarded rather as a great 


than a supreme artist. When 
he died in 1588, only fifty years old, he left a very enduring 
inheritance. 

It was on the whole his moderate and judicious sumptuous- 
ness that inspired the painters of the next century. It was well 
that they sought his imitable merits and not the passion of 
Titian and Jintoretto. It was largely thanks to Veronese 
that Venetian art suffered no such sharp decline as befell that 
of Florence and Rome. ‘The decorative tradition of Veronese 
sufficed to nourish a Piazetta and a Tiepolo a century and a 


half after his death. 


For Giovanni Battista Tiepolo® (1695-1770) in sheer force 
and fertility yields to none of his Renaissance predecessors. 
There never was a more valiant draughtsman or a more splen- 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 441 


did colorist. Such decorations as those of the Scuola del Car- 
mine, and the Labia Palace fall little behind Veronese’s pag- 


Fic. 305. G-B. Tiepolo. Time revealing Truth. — Villa Biron, 


Vicenza. 


eantry in grandeur while representing an audacity of stroke 
and coloration which Veronese lacked. So the tragic scenes 
of Christ’s Passion at San Luigi have the intensity of Tin- 
toretto if lacking something of his nobility. In the ceiling 
decorations of Tiepolo, Figure 305, we see the freest fancies of 


442 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


the Baroque, its customary tumult of shimmering clouds and 
hovering pearly figures, repeated with a lightness and audacity 
and withal measure which the Baroque itself never attained 


Fic. 306. Antonio Canale. Island of San Michele. — Royal Collec- 


tions, Windsor. 


save in its great initiator Correggio. Such powers as Tiepolo’s 
soon won him international patronage. He painted in Aus- 
tria and died at Madrid. With him perishes the grandeur of 
the Venetian school. Only a tinge of masquerade and ex- 
hibitionism puts him lower than his constant exemplar, Paolo 
Veronese. 

Indeed the simplicity which is the most enduring charm of 
any art is more felt in the minor Venetians of Tiepolo’s time, 


as in Antonio Canale, called Canaletto, Figure 306, who paint-. 


a 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 443 
ed the irradiated panorama of the Venetian lagoon and canals 
-with the ardent precision of a reborn Gentile Bellini. Frances- 


co Guardi” (1712-1765), Canaletto’s pupil, with a freer brush 
and fancy paints the spectacle of Venice, Figure 307, its balls 


Fic. 307. Francesco Guardi. Scuola di San Marco. Pen and Wash 
Drawing. — Lamperti Coll., Milan. 


and promenades and water pageants, with the sensitiveness 
of a Carpaccio. But Carpaccio’s youthful world is no longer 
there to paint. Romance has given way to casual amorous 
intrigue, sentiment to show. But out of the welter of sophisti- 
cated gayety still rise clean against the heavens the pale domes 
and bell towers of an older and finer Venice. Guardi is per- 
haps at his best in the numerous tiny oil sketches which deal 
with the remote and solitary groves and ruins of the lagoon. 
Here we have felicities of broken color and niceties of obser- 
vation, accurate notations of evanescent effects of light, which 
can still give lessons to the most modern landscapists. 


444. HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


In Pietro Longhi (1702-1762) Venice developed a sympa- 
thetic chronicler of her social pleasures, Figure 308. The 
world of his delicate and witty little canvases is that of the 
card party, the formal call, the 
vanity and ceremony of philan- 
dering, the shop, the musicale, 
the masked ball. Only Holland 
has given so true and sympa- 
thetic a record of her smaller 
affairs, and at the moment, only 
Hogarth in England and Chardin 
in France were doing the thing 
with equal ability. 

Nothing better shows the 
slightly anachronistic quality of 
Tiepolo’s grandeur than a fine 
Longhi. The Venetian imagina- 


Fic. 308. Pietro Longhi. Maskers . . 
a AT ee tion had moved indoors, so to 


speak, had foregone in favor of 
individual gratifications the old vision of the collective splendor. 
Venice no longer dines grandly in the open with Veronese, 
she coquettishly sips coffee with Longhi. If she had declined 
in nobility, she had at least kept her sincerity and taste. Her 
affair had ever been rather with appearances than with ideals 
or interpretations. But since the Greeks no other nation had 
considered appearances with such noble candor. She kept 
to the end the good pictorial habit of letting appearances 
explain themselves. Thus if a Titian will stand beside a Pheidian 
marble, so will a Tiepolo beside an Alexandrian masterpiece, 
while a trim belle of Pietro Longhi need feel no confusion 
before a Tanagra figurine. Time passes gently over a city 
whose artistic aims are as limited as her taste is sure. Venice 
had ever been gracious in her grandeur, and gracious she re- 
mained even after she had ceased to be grand. 


ee 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 445 


ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER VIII 


TITIAN’S ASSUMPTION THE BEGINNING OF THE VENETIAN GRAND 
STYLE 


Titian’s contemporaries were fully aware that the Assumption (1518) 
marked the beginning of the Grand Style at Venice and that the change 
was revolutionary. The critic Lodovico Dolce writes in his Dialogo 
della Pittura, Florence, 1735, p. 286 f. putting the words into the mouth 
of Aretino: 


“After not much time [after the Fondaco frescoes, 1508] he was given 
to paint a great panel for the high-altar of the Friars Minor; where 
Titian, still young, painted in oils the Virgin, who rises to heaven among 
many angels who accompany her, and above her he figured a God Father 
flanked by two angels. It seems really as if she rises with a face full of 
humility, and her robes fly lightly. At the bottom are the disciples 
who with various attitudes manifest joy and amazement, and are mostly 
larger than life, and assuredly in that picture is contained the grandeur 
and terribleness of Michelangelo, the pleasingness and grace of Raphael, 
with the coloring proper to nature, and, moreover, this was the first 
public work which he made in oils; and he made it in very little time, and 
young.” 

“Thereupon the stupid painters and the vulgar herd who up to then 
had seen nothing but the cold and dead things of Giovanni Bellini, of 
Gentile, and of [Alvise] Vivarini (since Giorgione, working in oils, had 
not yet had any public work; and for the most part made no other works 
than half figures and portraits) which were without movement and 
without relief, spake great ill of that picture. Afterwards, as envy cooled, 
and opening their eyes a little to the truth, the people began to be amazed 
at the new manner discovered in Venice by Titian: and all the painters 
from then on strove to imitate it; but being off their own path, became 
confused. And surely it must seem a miracle that Titian, without having 
at that time seen the antiquities of Rome, which were the light of all the 
good painters, solely with that little spark, which he had discovered in 
the works of Giorgione, saw and perceived the idea of perfect 
painting.” 


The general critical justness of this statement must condone its abun- 
dant overstatements and errors of fact. 


446 HISTORY OF TTALIAN PAINTING 


AURELIO. LUINI ON TITIAN’S IMPRESSIONISM 


“Aurelio Luini has excellently understood this art [of landscape]. 
To whom it once happened that visiting Titian, and asking him hig 
opinion about the background of trees, besides many reasons which 
he heard from him about making the foliage sparkle against the back- 
ground, he saw one of his [Titian’s] wonderful landscapes which he had 
at home, which, having seen quietly, Aurelio thought a daubed up thing, 
but afterwards, having withdrawn to a distance, it seemed to him that 
the sun shone resplendently in it, making the paths retreat on this side 
and that; so that Aurelio had to say that he had never seen a rarer 
thing in the world in the way of landscapes.” 

Lomazzo, Trattato, Milan, 1584, p. 474, 5. 


On BELLE NATURE AND THE ANTIQUE 


The Renaissance idea that Nature must be ennobled and corrected 
by the Antique is plainly formulated by Dolce, again under the name of 
Aretino, Dialogo, p. 190. 


“One should then choose the most perfect form, imitating nature in 
part... . And partly one should imitate the beautiful marble and 
bronze figures of the ancient masters. Whereof who so shall taste and 
possess fully the marvellous perfection, will be able with certainty to 
correct many defects of nature, and make his pictures noteworthy and / 
grateful to all. Inasmuch as the ancient things contain the entire per- 
fection of art, and can be the exemplars of all beauty.” 


This is one of the earliest full statements of the notion of belle nature, 
and of the antique as normative. The dogma persists with unabated 
rigor down to Sir Joshua Reynolds (see Illustration to Chapter VI, 
p. 316) and Jacques Louis David. 


GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS ON THE GREEK AFFINITIES OF 
VENETIAN PAINTING 


“The revival of the Greek Language and Greek Literature raised 
the long ebb into a wave that swept over civilized Europe. On its glit- 
tering crest the Venetian painters especially were lifted into the society 
of gods, goddesses, nymphs, and satyrs. They might see sky, sea and 
earth peopled with radiant beings; perhaps with a sort of semi-belief 
such as we accord to the Lorelei and fairies, creations that somehow 
easily worked in with creeds and experience. Anyhow, they might see 


VENETIAN PAINTING OF THE RENAISSANCE 447 


Pan come dallying down the sparkling brook-side, now shouting to the 
laughing brown nymphs rustling through the reeds, and pretending to 
be afraid, now scattering a shower of notes from his pipes that would 
fall upon the ears as the brightness of the iris over a fountain falls upon 
the eye.” ... 

“Tt may seem strange if I place the Venetian school and Titian, with 
his liberal line — which, however, is by no means wanting in reticence — 
in closer relationship with Greek art of the great period than the more 
classical schools of Tuscany and Rome. Supposing one were to endeavor 
to paint a restoration of the pediments of the Parthenon, it would be 
possible to interpolate with figures by Titian, never with any by Poussin, 
or, I think, even by Raphael or Michael Angelo.” . . . 

“In spite of extravagant and even absurd defects (for the great 
artist’s eyes no longer served him faithfully), when Titian, towards the 
end of his life painted the ‘Europa’... the muse who inspired 
Pheidias laid her hand on the old man’s shoulder, and she inspired 
the wealth of volume, ease of line, and glowing sense of nature’s exu- 
berance.”’ 

George Frederick Watts, his Life and Writings, London and New York, 
Vil Lies 251.963, 254. 


ADDENDUM. Since publication five volumes of Raimond van 
Marle’s ‘‘The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting” (The 
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff) have appeared. For its period, the four- 
teenth century and earlier, this orderly, and richly illustrated work 
supersedes most of the earlier enclycopedic histories. 


PAPeREALISTS AND ECLECTICS 


Fic. 309. Caravaggio. Death of the Virgin. — Louvre. 


450 


CHAPTER IX 


fee EALISTS AND ECLECTICS 


The Confusion following Raphael and Michelangelo— Giulio Romano — Cara- 
vaggio and realistic Revolt — Salvator Rosa, romantic Individualism 
and the Picturesque— The Carracci and the Eclectic Ideal — Later 
Eclectics; Guido Reni — Domenichino — The Waning of Italian Great- 
ness — Influence of Italy on the Schools of France, Flanders, and Spain. 


Italian painting suddenly declined for lack of taste. The 
followers of Raphael and Michelangelo possessed astonishing 
power and knowledge, but, save their own cleverness, no 
longer had anything to express. Thus painting became merely 
an art of self-exploitation and display, a matter of difficult 
foreshortenings, complicated groupings, and novel construc- 
tions in light and shade. Such at least was the case at Rome, 
and partly at Florence. At Venice, Milan, Cremona, Ferrara, 
and generally in the North the decline was gradual and be- 
nign. Sincere art of a minor character was still produced. 
But in the artistic centre the collapse was complete, and all 
the more disastrous that nobody realized that a collapse had 
come. 

It is staggering to find that Vasari, in the face of merited 
ridicule, had no doubt that he was a great painter. How he 
boasts of his own powers! ‘“‘But what matters most for this 
art, is that they have made it so perfect today, and so easy 
for him who possesses design, that where formerly a picture was 
made by one of our masters in six years, today our masters 
make six in one. And I am the credible witness of this both 
by my observation and by my work. And many more perfect 

451 


452 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


and finished pictures are now seen, than formerly were made 
by the important masters.” (Vol. IV, p. 13.) Nothing is more 
appalling than to find Vasari at Florence and Lomazzo at Milan 
regularly naming Giulio Romano, Polidoro and Maturino along 


Fic. 310. Giulio Romano. Battle for Troy. Frescot ee del 
Té. Mantua. ; 


with Raphael and Michelangelo. Evidently the old sure 
taste of the Renaissance has yielded to confusion. 

Indeed patronage had changed. It is no longer spontaneous 
but organized. We now have academies, art schools, art 
criticism, exhibitions, archeologists, picture dealers. Art no 
longer rests on generally accepted ideas and broad approba- 
tions, but is a game between experts. 

To enumerate the followers of Michelangelo and Raphael 
and allot to each his due dispraise would be in no way profitable. 
Giulio Romano may represent them all. With extraordinary 
powers as a draughtsman of the figure, and with paradoxical 
taste in minor decoration, we know him already as the vul- 
garizer of Raphael’s designs in the Stanza of Heliodorus and 
of the Burning City. Later (1524-46) removed from Raphael’s 


THE REALISTS AND ECLECTICS 453 


influence, at Mantua, he develops a coarse titanism. The old 
Castello of the Gonzagas and the Palazzo del Teé, Figure 310, 
are tediously full of sensational and occasionally obscene myth- 
ologies which are done with amazing energy and facility, but are 
as restless and undecorative in design as they are hot and foxy 
in color. And the immoderations and indecencies have not 
even the excuse of naturalness, they are coldly calculated and 
studied. Such talented Florentine imitators of Michelangelo 
as Pontormo and Bronzino we have already considered. At 
Rome, he left at least one disciple of talent, Daniele da Volterra, 
in the composition of whose masterpiece the Deposition in the 
Convent of the Trinita, at Rome, the master himself may have 
had a hand. Rather than delay over these complacent epi- 
gones we do well to pass to those few more intelligent artists 
who saw that something was amiss. 

Michelangelo Amerighi, (1569-1608), called from his Lom- 
bard birthplace Caravaggio, and Annibale Carracci of Bologna 
are here the outstanding names. The former bitterly fought 
the grand style in the name of naturalism, the latter attempt- 
ed to reintegrate it through a critical eclectism. ‘Their in- 
fluence is dominant from the last decade of the sixteentr 
century. 

Caravaggio! had carefully studied the impressionistic manner 
of late Titian but finally adopts a harsh and resolute chiaro- 
scuro with the light restricted and the canvas mostly black. 
Thus his modelling is both brutal and academic. His real 
fight was with the nobility of Raphael. His saints are taken 
from the streets and often from the gutters. He loves charac- 
ter above all, and wants it proletarian. Within his chosen 
limitations he is a powerful and sincere artist. His master- 
pieces are the Entombment in the Vatican, and the Death of 
the Virgin in the Louvre, Figure 309, which created so much 
disapproval that it had to be removed from its altar. Both 
pictures take the theme out of the realm of legend, making it 


454A HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


drastic and contemporary. Both, while rejecting all grandeur 
in the figures, preserve the tradition thereof in the composition. 
One gets Caravaggio in epitome in The Peter denying his 
Lord of the Vatican. Figure 311. It is a powerful character 
study from low life. Indeed character is his watchword. 
One finds it extravagantly over-emphasized in his famous 
pothouse and gambling scenes, a revolutionary innovation. 
The most famous and one of the best is The Card Players, at 
Dresden, Figure 312. It is the symbol of the painter’s love 
of low life. He killed his man in a duel, and died himself 
when turned out of prison into the August sun. 

Before that fitting end he had fled to Naples where amid 
the corruption of the Spanish overlordship his proletarian ideals 
became generally contagious. ‘They were taken up eagerly 
by the Valencian, José Ribera, who with an equal sense for 
character and a more genuine religious feeling transmitted 


the manner to Seville and eventually to Velasquez. So Cara- 


vaggio became the founder of the modern realistic and im- 
pressionistic schools, a precursor of Courbet and Manet. 
Except for a surplusage of too emphatic character studies, 
smiling and weeping philosophers, Ribera was a true and most 
skilful artist. Having no. quarrel with an earlier grand style, 
he had the grace of simplicity. nae fal 

Both at Rome and Naples swaggering Caravaggio had enor- 
mous success. His heads, we read, brought more than other 
men’s compositions. He boasted himself the greatest painter 
of all time, and was often believed. From his swarthy tones 
his entire school took the name, the Tenebrists. His experi- 
ments in interior and artificial lighting were widely imitated, 
and again ultimately passed into recent Impressionism. His 
rejection of noble form in favor of what one sees, and of decora- 
tive color in favor of natural, was the sharpest possible chal- 
lenge of the Renaissance style, and outside of Italy where the 
noble tradition was only incipient did much to arrest its dif- 


THE REALISTS AND ECLECTICS 


Fic. 311. Caravaggio. St. Peter denying his Lord. — Vatican. 
’ 


Fic. 312. Caravaggio. The Card Players. — Dresden, 


456 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


fusion. From the point of view of modern art there are few 
more important figures. From the point of view of art broadly 
he has his serious limitations. Most damaging is his waiver 
of civilization, he looks at low life not with the eyes of a de- 
tached artist but with those of a ruffan. He did not have the 
intelligence to live up to his own formula. Annibale Carracci 
was once looking at Caravaggio’s Judith, and, being pressed for 
an opinion, remarked that it was “too natural.” He spoke as 
an admirer of the grand style. A modern realist would make 
the far more radical criticism that Caravaggio is never natural 
enough. He really makes no close study of the subtleties of 
natural appearance or of the actual refinements of illumina- 
tion, but rather substitutes for the old stately formulas a new, 
more ugly, and less studied formula of his own. Logically 
he should have gone forward with Ribera and Velasquez to a 
real investigation of appearances. But his logic was only that 
of scorn, and it would doubtless have somewhat compensated 
him for a sordid and premature “end, could he have forseen 
that his biographers would credit him with the ruin of Italian 
painting. 

Through Ribera, Caravaggio’s influence passes to the Nea- 
politan, Salvator? Rosa (1615-1673). With greater vivacity 
and better color Salvator repeats the character studies and 
tavern scenes, also bringing the proletarian mood into myth- 
ology. He painted battle pieces of real ferocity. He was an 
irascible, vain and capricious person, proud of being so; a 
scorner of his own patrons and of the bourgeois generally; 
a maker of epigrams, and a writer of satires. His specialty 
is the sinister and picturesque, and he practices it with gusto 
and ability, Figure 313. Salvator is the real discoverer of the 
picturesque, the first enthusiast for the savage aspects of na- 
ture. Likewise he was one of the first artists to study effects 
—sunsets, storms, mists, and whirling clouds. He excur- 
sioned in the Abruzzo, equally savoring its crags, torrents, 


THE REALISTS AND ECLECTICS 457 


and forests, and its ferocious banditti. His letters on these 
wanderings are among the first and most important documents 
of the modern cult of nature. He writes: ‘You have saddened 
me by giving me the news of 
your having been in Garfagna, 
and having rejoiced in the sav- 
agery of that country so con- 
genial to my nature.... To 
be merely reminded of it brings 
the tears to my eyes.” Again 
he writes from the Adriatic 
Apennines: “I have been two 
weeks in continual travel and the 
trip is much more strange and 


picturesque than that of Flor- 


Fic. 313. Salvator Rosa. Land- 
since there is such an extrava- scape with figures — Pitti. 


ence, beyond comparison so, 


gant mixture of the rough and cultivated, of the level and pre- 
_ cipitous that nothing more could be desired for the satisfaction 
of the eye.” ... “At Terni, four miles off the road I saw the 
famous falls of the Velino, a thing to haunt and possess the 
most insatiable mind because of its horrid beauty. To see a 
river that plunges straight down a mountain for half a mile, and 
sends up its foam as high!’”’ Much of the stormy and energetic 
character of such scenes is transcribed in the best landscapes of 
Salvator, Figure 314. In their age they evoked little follow- 
ing. But these forests, cascades, evening seaports, and ruined 
sites were freely bought by the English, greatly admired and 
had their part in producing the literary enthusiasm for wild 
nature in the eighteenth century. 

Salvator avows his “extravagant genius,” is driven by the 
lust for novelty, is a modern and romantic spirit. Withal 
he was a man of capacity and taste with an open-minded under- 
standing of quite alien merit. “Here, we esteem M. Poussin,”’ 


458 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


‘¢ 


he writes in October, 1665, ““more than any one else in the 


world.” 


Poussin could never have returned the compliment. His 
approbation was for Raphael, the Carracci and Domenichino. 


Fic. 314. Salvator Rosa. Landscape. — Pitti. 


Indeed a chief glory of the Bolognese Eclectics was that their 
critical method sufficed to nurture so classic a spirit as Pous- 
sin’s and so to establish the academic tradition for Northern 
Europe. 

Though the Eclectic movement is properly associated with 
the cousins Lodovico and Annibale Carracci,? it somewhat ante- 
cedes them. The impetus comes from Flanders with the painter 
of Antwerp, Denis Calvert, who came to Bologna late in the 
sixteenth century and founded an art school. Like all the 
better educated Flemings, he represented a profound nostalgia 


THE REALISTS AND ECLECTICS 459 


for Renaissance grandeur, and also a certain detachment from 
the particular Italian artists who had embodied the ideal of 
grandezza. Such a man is, perforce, an eclectic, studying widely 
the methods of his great predecessors and seeking to assimilate 
in his own art their various perfections. Besides, methods of 
comparative study which had formerly been extremely difficult 
if not impossible were now easy. Casts were available of the 
antique marbles, fairly faithful engravings were at hand for 
all the great painters. It is significant that both the Carracci 
were reproductive engravers. Denis Calvert was no genius, 
but a prudent and sagacious artist who made the most of a 
slender endowment. His critical and assimilative spirit passed 
over to his best pupils. Their reform, unlike Caravaggio’s, 
was not revolutionary, but based on a careful restudy of the 
grand style, which they had never wavered in venerating. 

Annibale Carracci was reared in devotion to Raphael, 
whose fine St. Cecilia was at Bologna. Venice lured him, 
but he was rebuffed by Tintoretto. Annibale made profound 
studies of Correggio at Parma, whence he writes that Raphael 
now seems wooden to him in comparison. He is now launched 
on the impossible quest of combining with the austere grandeur 
of the Roman School, the charm of Venetian coloring and the 
emotional instability of Correggio. Thus it was an attempt 
to restore the grand style largely in the name of one of its 
chief disintegrators, and as such it was from the first headed 
for failure. Yet it was an attempt dictated by the times, 
and the inevitable choice of any superior spirit who wished to 
reknit the Renaissance tradition. 

It was the moment of the Catholic Reaction and of the en- 
deavor of the new Jesuit Order to rebuild a shaken Church 
on the basis of persuasion. Largely shorn of authority, the 
Church must now be popular or perish. It wisely chose to 
be popular, adopting the thrilling novelties of Baroque archi- 
tecture, borrowing from the opera its swelling choral cadences, 


460 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


everywhere stressing the note of charm, surprise and emotion. 
So the moderation and austerity which underlay the Renais- 
sance style were forbidden to the Eclectics, and they chiefly 
differed from the rival Naturalists in choosing to make their 


Fic. 316. Annibale Carracci. 


Fic, 315. Lodovico  Carracci. Madonna in Glory. — Bologna. 


Assumption. — Bologna. 


sensationalism as decorous as the circumstances permitted. 
Such is the social background of the Carracci’s reform, and they 
deserve utmost credit for achieving so much under such limi- 
tations. 

Agostino (1568-1602) was the brains of the family, courtier, 
scholar, man of the world. Annibale (1560-1609) was the 
nerves, — moody, shy, solitary, with titan ambitions in a small 
and unprepossessing frame. His cousin, Lodovico (1555- 
1619), was possibly the best artist of the three if only because 
he attempted less and followed sentimentalism frankly with- 
out too much bothering about grandeur. 

Lodovico, Figure 315, and Annibale, Figure 316, enriched 


ire EALISTS AND ECLECTICS 461 


the churches of Bologna with great animated altar-pieces which 
enthralled their contemporaries, and today seem more than a 
little affected. But that is merely because we no longer share 
what was an entirely sincere way of religious feeling. They 
started an Academy in which the antique, the nude, and com- 
petitive composition were the staple of instruction quite as in 
French and British State art schools today. In the Bolognese’ 
palaces the Carracci did in fresco great mythological series, 
consulting Homer, Virgil and Ovid and Apollonius of Rhodes. 
In the main they had friezes to do, and they drew heavily 
from Correggio, tempering his alacrity with something of the 
heavier energy of the Roman style. 

In 1585 the Carracci set up their Academy. It was soon 
thronged. Agostino, a courtly, learned and accomplished per- 
son, was the leading influence, being lecturer as well as draw- 
ing master. Even, Annibale, habitually an offish and difficult 
man, is said to have been affable and helpful to his disciples. 

In studying his pictures, one feels that he was thwarted of 
his true development. Not only was he much of a realist, 
painting tavern scenes, Figure 317, after Caravaggio’s lead, but 
also a studious and charming landscape painter, Figure 318. 
His soberly colored and gracefully composed landscapes were 
an important influence on Poussin. Annibale’s adventures in 
the grand style, though audacious and loudly applauded, 
really did some violence to his modest and sensitive spirit. 
His was the least academic temperament imaginable, and the 
final disastrous quarrel with his eminently academic brother, 
Agostino, was inevitable. 

Annibale and Agostino were called to Rome in 1595 to fresco 
Cardinal Odoardo Farnese’s palace. Annibale was thirty-five 
years old, Agostino a few years younger. Both had reaped 
all honors possible at Bologna, and they came to the Eternal 
City at a fortunate moment. The favorite decorators were 
men of routine talent, Taddeo Zuccaro and the Cavaliere 


462 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


Fic. 317. Annibale Carracci. The Bean Eater. — Prince Colonna, 
Rome. 


Fic. 318. Annibale Carracci. Flight to Egypt. — Doria, Rome. 


ERA Lt Cage ne NE 


- 


THE YREALISTS AND ECLECTICS 463 


d’ Arpino. Caravaggio’s amazing and perturbing genius had 
already asserted itself, but he was not a mural painter. After 
a preliminary series of mythologies in the riverside casino of 


Fic. 319. Annibale Carracci. Ceiling Detail. — Farnese Palace, Rome. 


the Palazzo Farnese, Annibale turned, in 1597, to the decora- 
tion of the great hall. It was a lofty tunnel-like room of re- 
fractory proportions. The theme was to be the loves of the 
gods. But the great spaces in which are represented Bacchus 
and Ariadne, the Judgment of Paris, Polyphemus and Galatea, 
Cephalus and Aurora, Hero and Leander, amongst other sub- 
jects, yield in effect to the general plan and the incidental deco- 
ration. Annibale, who despite contemporary accounts to the 
contrary, controlled everything, has taken as his motive the 
architectural framework which Michelangelo designed for the 
Sistine, with its burden of decorative nudes. One looks past 
heavy painted cornices, Figure 319, to painted statuary in 
profusion, thickly set, and, behind, more nudes in natural 
hues, the whole echoed by nudes in stucco relief on the walls. 


464 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


We have instead of the relative flatness of Michelangelo and 
his predecessors a consistent lumpiness, which, while theo- 
retically tasteless, is actually rich, satisfying, and even light 


Fic. 320. Annibale Carracci and Helpers. Grand Hall, Farnese Palace. 
— Rome. 


Only an extraordinary ability could have kept any kind of 
unity in this wilful and extravagant complexity, Figure 320. 
But unity there is and coherent expression of a mood at once 
pompous and festal. 

The pictures, as we have noted, seem to count for less than 
their borders. When we examine the love scenes, we find 
them at once coarse and mannered. They are superficially 
like Giulio Romano at Mantua but without his self-satis- 
fied brutality. To this extent they are inferior, and indeed 
the strain to be at once grand, graceful, and passionate is 


THE REALISTS AND ECLECTICS 465 


only too apparent throughout the pictorial part. Yet as a 
whole the decoration seems hardly inferior in power, ingenuity, 
and rhythmical fulness to such ancient masterpieces of kin- 
dred inspiration as the Pergamon frieze. For the moment 
the decoration was enthusiasti- 
cally acclaimed, after  three- 
quarters of a century it taught 
Charles Le Brun the way to 
decorate the Louvre and the 
Palace at Versailles, and even 
today the admirer of the foun- 
tains of Rome and of her 
Baroque churches must admit 
that Annibale caught the very 
spirit of his day, in its super- 
fluity of learned vaingloriousness 
and shortage of the simpler and 
more noble passions. 

For the artist the work brought 
only chagrin. The Cardinal 


treated him with stinginess and : 
Fic. 321. Guido Reni. Ma- 


it F . e e . : A 
personal despite. His irritation donna with two Saints. 


with his brother reached the ex- 

plosive point. Agostino left him staggering under the weight 
of an ungrateful task, he fell into a dangerous melancholy, and 
in 1609 died miserably, leaving his helpers Albani and Dome- 
nichino to finish the gallery. 

Of the followers of the Carracci, Guido Reni (1575-1642) 
and Domenichino (1581-1641), are the most important. At 
his worst Guido Reni is the most repellant of sentimentalists, 
at his best a realist of the calibre of Ribera himself. In his time 
there are no grander old men than his, better painted or more 
fully realized as characters. You find them at their best in 
the Madonna of St. Paul, at Berlin, or the Immaculate Concep- 


466 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


tion at Petrograd, or the Madonna with St. Jerome, in the 
Vatican, Figure 321. It is hard to reconcile them with 
his sleek and cheaply seductive Magdalens, Cleopatras and 
Venuses. What steadies him in his inconsistency is a fine 


Fic. 322. Guido Reni. Aurora. Ceiling Fresco. — Casino Rospigliosi, 
Rome. 


and simple sense of composition. He is lucid where his masters, 
the Carracci, tend to be confused. His taste is more coherent 
than his character. Under other conditions than those of 
academic Bologna and Papal Rome he might easily have be- 
come a realist of Zurbaran’s type. As it was, he undertook 
the usual synthesis of the grand style with the new sentimental- 
ity. Generally speaking he is neither grand nor sentimental 
enough, but superficial in both regards. Yet his discretion 
saves him in such works as the ceiling of the Villa Rospigliosi 
(1615) and the supremely elegant St. Michael, Figure 323, of 
the Cappucini. I like the Aurora, Figure 322, nay love it 
well this side of idolatry, for the same reason that I like Kip- 
ling’s lines 
‘An’ the dawn comes up like thunder 
Outer China ’crost the bay.” 


Both the fresco and the verses have the same pounding and 
obvious, yet thrilling cadences, both bring lyricism to the 
brink of bombast without letting it go over. 


ee 


* et os 


oe I aE 


Mead J 


THE REALISTS AND ECLECTICS 467 


Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino, (1581-1641) is 
a far more serious figure. We see him best not in the sentimental 
sibyls which he multiplied nor even in the studied emotionalism 
of his most famous altar-piece, the Last Communion of St. 


‘Fic: 323. Guido Reni. — Saint 
Michael. — Cappucini, Rome. 


Fic. 324. Domenichino. Last 
Communion of St. Jerome. 
— Vatican. 


Jerome, in the Vatican, Figure 324, but, rather in such decora- 
tions as those in S. Andrea della Valle, and in the monastic 
church of Grotta Ferrata. Here we find a heavy and simple 
emphasis, a great clarity both of figure construction and of 
composition. For his personal awkwardness, patience 
and quietism his comrades mockingly called him the Ox. It 
took character to play the ox amid the febrile sprightliness of 
the Catholic Reaction. His gravity is marked also in his color. 
He forsakes the old decorative conventions of the Renaissance 
and works in olive and silvery tones which suggest in a gen- 
eralizing way the coolness and freshness of nature. Above all 
he is not facile like most of his contemporaries, but studious, 


1 


468 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


dilatory, and considerate. At times he yields to the prevailing 
sentimentality, but usually he is both spontaneous and reticent. 
He seldom insists, but candidly lets the picture be seen. All 
these qualities appear in the modestly hoydenish masterpiece, 


Fic. 325. Domenichino. Diana and her Nymphs. — Borghese, Rome. 


Diana and her Nymphs, in the Borghese Gallery, Figure 325. 
It is completely captivating for its element of surprise, its 
manly wholesomeness, its winsome setting of lithe girlish 
bodies amid verdure under a gray sky. This unaffected mood 
in mythology has rarely been recaptured. We have it in 
Vermeer’s little Diana at the Hague and, only yesterday, in 
the Nausicaa of Lucien Simon. Such qualities of lucidity, 
reserve, and simple nobility made Domenichino the natural 
model for Nicholas Poussin. We can trace the influence through 
Poussin’s masterpieces, and had France been wise enough to 
understand her greatest painter, her academic tradition, which 
was promoted in Poussin’s name, might have taken a much 
more fruitful course than it actually did. 


THE REALISTS AND ECLECTICS 469 — 


An ill fate finally took Domenichino to Naples. There he 
found the rufhanly local painters banded against every for- 
eigner, and in particular he met the systematic animosity of 
the truculent Spaniard, Ribera. Outright terrorism alternated 
with petty persecution. They defaced his work and tampered 
with his materials. Soon they broke his delicate and timid 
spirit, even turned him against the wife with whom he had 
lived on terms of ideal affection. Today it remains uncertain 
whether he died of shattered nerves or was actually poisoned. 
Presumably the barbarous Neapolitans would have done about 
the same to any visiting artist, but doubtless they turned the 
screw a shade harder upon a gentle idealist who brought into 
their realistic stews some afterglow of the quietistic dignity of 
a Montagna or a Cima. 

When all reservations are made, the Eclectics had fairly done 
their work of correcting the disorder of the late Renaissance 
and of restoring something of the old decorum. They made 
possible the revival of the grand style at Rome, in the eighteenth 
century, by Carlo Maratta and Raphael Mengs. The Eclectics 
were the bridge by which the classical manner passed over into 
Western Europe, an indispensable link in the chain of the 
great hellenistic tradition. That should be enough to keep 
them in memory if not in unqualified honor. 

Our review of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth cen- 
tury in Italy will have served its purpose if it has convinced 
the reader that this was no time of stagnation. We have rather 
to do with activities of exploration and reconstruction which 
are much too restless and various. The intellectual power of 
the Italian painters had not greatly diminished in comparison 
with the Renaissance. Italy still was capable of giving the 
leads which have guided painting elsewhere ever since. What 
was lacking was not energy but patience, reflection and taste. 
The Italian artist tended to regard himself as a swift and reso- 
lute executant first of all, and no longer knew how to nourish 


470 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


his spirit as a man. Even as executants, the realists and ec- 
lectics had the humiliation of finding themselves outdone by 
foreigners. Successively in the seventeenth century Ribera, 
Rubens, Van Dyck, Velasquez, Claude Lorrain and Poussin 
came to Italy and sojourned there. It was in every case ap- 
parent that the foreigner excelled all native artists in his field. 
The traditional authority of Italian painting still held, but 
its contemporary glory was evidently waning. 

But even in decline Italy was strong enough to hand on her 
torch to newer hands. From Titian stems the florid classicism 
and aristocratic portraiture of Rubens and Van Dyck, which 
dominated the whole eighteenth century in France and England; 
through Caravaggio and Ribera, Italy made Velasquez the 
founder of those most characteristic nineteenth century move- 
ments, realism and impressionism; through Raphael, the 
Carracci and Domenichino, she fed the white flame of Poussin’s 
classicism, which 1n one way or another has determined the 
academic development of all Western Europe. Thus Italian 
painting, eternally alive in the timeless region where dwells the 
fame of Giotto, Masaccio, Leonardo, Giorgione, Raphael, 
Michelangelo, Titian, is as well most practically and actually 
alive in the recent and present struggles, failures, and triumphs 
of our modern schools. Without understanding Italian painting 
we cannot understand our own painting. And while the modern 
world will hardly return to the coherence, solidity, and grace 
of the great Gothic and Renaissance masters, I am confident 
that there can be no exit from our present confusion and in- 
coherence until our painters learn at least to consult those 
great Italian predecessors who dwelt on the heights above 
which is the abode of the human spirit’s creative rest. 


Men eALISTS AND ECLECTICS 471 


ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER IX 


ON THE ECLECTIC IDEAL 


The nearly contemporary account of Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Felsina 
Pittrice, Bologna, 1841, Tom. I. p. 263 is instructive. 

“TLodovico. . . was the first who supplied a firm prop to tottering paint- 
ing and was able to save it from imminent harm and ruin. He was the one 
who courageously opposed that vainglorious time, which succeeded the 
most perfect age, and liberating it from the common ills of those erroneous 
mannerisms which dared to tyrranize that fair profession that had been 
raised so high, not only wished to restore it to its first vigor, but also 
to a state still more perfect and sublime. ... Taking the best from 
all the best artists, one sees him, with a facility no longer used and valued, 
form from them a brief compendium, rather a precious extract, outside 
of and beyond which little more remained for the studious to desire. 
And coupling and uniting with the discretion of Raphael the intelli- 
gence of Michelangelo, and adding withal with the color of Titian the 
angelic purity of Correggio, he succeeded in forming from all these 
manners a single one, which had nothing to envy in the Roman, Flor- 
entine, Venetian and Lombard manners.” 


A Sonnet supposed, without complete evidence, to have been ad- 
dressed by Annibale Carracci to the painter Niccold d’Abate gives an 
even more complete and correct account of the elements that blended in 
the style of the Carracci. I quote it from Rouchés, La Peinture Bolo- 
naise, Paris, 1913, p. 123, note 1. 


“To make a good painter let him have 
At ready and eager hand the drawing of Rome, 
The movement with the shading of Venice, 
And the dignified coloring of Lombardy. 
The terrible manner of Michelangelo 
And Correggio’s pure and sovereign style 
And the true symmetry of Raphael, 
Tibaldi’s decorum and substance, 
The inventiveness of learned Primaticcio 
‘And a little of Parmigianino’s grace. 
Not without having strenuously made such studies 
Let him place before himself for imitation 
The works which our Niccolo has left here.” 


THE END 


NOTES 


CHarlbRy | 


1. For the altar as tomb-shrine see Yrjo Hirn’s learned and fascinating 
book, The Sacred Shrine, London, 1912. 

2. For the Byzantine pictorial style see the excellent summary in Fogg Art 
Museum, Collection of Mediaeval and Renaissance Paintings, Harvard Univ. 
Press, 1919, pp. 3-10; also a more extended treatment in O. M. Dalton By- 
zantine Art and Archaeology, Oxford, 1911, chapters V, VI, VII. 

3. For the influence of St. Dominic, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Francis 
read the respective chapters in Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind; for St. Francis, 
Thomas Okey’s translation, The little Flowers of St. Francis in “Everyman’s 
Library.” E. Gebhart, Italie Mystique, Paris, 1908, is also enlightening. 

4. Burlington Magazine, Vol. XXXII (1918) pp. 45-6. Mr. Berenson in 
Rassegna d’ Arte, “ Dedalo,” Vol I1., (1921) fasc. V, makes this superb Madonna 
a Constantinople picture of the late 12th century. His confessedly slight 
argument fails to convince me. Aside from the air of the picture, the form of 
the wooden throne is specific for Tuscany and the second half of the 13th 
century. 

Cimabue. Andreas Aubert, Cimabue Frage, Leipzig, 1907, is the stand- 
ard work. The various views on the early frescoes of the Upper Church at 
Assisi are well summarized in Brown and Rankin, 4 Short History, pp. 54 and 
57-59. 

An unsuccessful attempt to reduce Cimabue to a myth has been made by 
Langton Douglas in his edition of C. &. C., Vol. I., p. 187-193. The construc- 
tive and accepted view is that of Aubert. My list differs slightly from his and is: 

Louvre Madonna, about 1275, Louvre. 

Trinita Madonna, about 1285, Uffizi. 

The frescoes of the Choir and transepts of S. Francesco at Assisi, sav- 
ing possibly the big Ascent to the Cross, circa 1296, Assisi. 

Madonna with St. Francis (fresco), after 1290, Assisi, 

Lower Church of San Francesco. 

St. John in mosaic in the Apse of the Cathedral at Pisa, 1301. 

Venturi’s endeavor to attach to Cimabue some of the later New Test- 
ament mosaics in the vault of the Florentine Baptistry, see Storia, Vol. V., p. 
229 — is plausible but not convincing. His attribution of lost frescoes in the 
portico of old St. Peter’s, known from sketch copies, Storia, Vol. V, p. 195 — 
has no solid basis. Two fresco fragments, heads of Peter and Paul, remain, 
and are published by Wilpert, Die Mosaiken €9, bd. I, fig. 144, and by him 
correctly assigned to Cavallini or some Roman follower. 

R. van Marle, in La Peinture Romaine, Strasbourg, 1921, has made a 
most careful study of all the earliest frescoes in the Upper Church. Generally 


473 


474 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


I concur in his conclusions, but cannot see Cavallini in the far abler work of 
the Isaac Master. The date, 1296, which Van Marle found in the Choir at 
Assisi, makes it pretty certain that all the frescoes in the Upper Church were 
executed between 1293-5 and 1300. 

In Toskanische Maler im XIII Fabrhundert, Berlin, 1922, Dr. O. Sirén 
makes a comprehensive survey of the earliest painters of Lucca, Pisa, and 
Florence. He endeavors to reconstruct the works of Coppo di Marcovaldo 
whom he regards as a formative influence on Cimabue. To the usual list of 
Cimabue’s works Dr. Siren adds, with Aubert, a great Madonna in the Servi, 
Bologna; and also a Madonna in the Verzocchi Collection, Milan; and an ex- 
traordinarily fine crucifixion in the d’Hendecourt Collection, London. Dr. Sirén 
also acepts for Cimabue the triptych of Christ, St. Peter and St James, which 
Berenson first published in Art in America, for 1920. Of these accretions 
none but the d’Hendecourt Crucifixion is at all persuasive to me. 

5. The latest and fullest discussion of Pietro Cavallini is by Stanley Lothrop 
in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. II, 1918. I think he is in 
error in seeing Cavallini at Assisi and Perugia. Wan Marle, note above, has 
thrown additional light on the continuity of a Roman school. 

6. C. &. C. (Ed. Hutton) Vol. I, pp. 194-5. Zimmermann (Giotto &c., 
Leipzig, 1899), H. Thode (Franz von Assisi, Berlin, 1904), and Fr. Hermanin 
(Gallerie nazionali Italiane, Vol. V (1902), p. 113) ascribe the Stories of Isaac 
and some other superior frescoes of the upper row to youthful Giotto. They 
seem too accomplished and mature for that and are all allied to Gaddo Gaddi’s 
mosaics at Rome. 

7. Giotto. Osvald Sirén, Coie and Some of his Followers, Cambridge, 
Harvard Univ. Press, 1917, in 2 Vols., gives a reasonable chronology and is 
valuable for illustrations. 

Roger E. Fry, Monthly Review, Vol. I, pp. 126-151; Vol. II, pp. 139-157; 
Vol. III, pp, 96-121 is an admirable critical analysis of Giotto’s style, but the 
ascriptions and chronology are often doubtful. Excellent on the frescoes at 
Sta. Croce. The essay is reprinted in Vision and Design, London, 1921. 

J. B. Supino’s startling views in the chronology of Giotto, expressed 
in Giotto, Florence, 1920, in 3 Vols., seem to me fantastic. 

His general orders is the Allegories of the Lower Church and the Baroncelli 
altar-piece about 1300, the Arena frescoes 1305, the St. Francis series in the 
Upper Church about 1310, the Peruzzi Chapel about 1312, etc. 

My list would be: 

The Early Part of the St. Francis Series (II-XVIIT) _ before 1300 


The Mosaic of the Navicella (completely restored) about 1300 
Stigmatization of St. Francis (Louvre) iy * 
The Arena Frescoes about 1305 
The Madonna of Ognissanti is a 
The Franciscan Allegories, Lower Church (design only) “ 1312-20 
The Stefaneschi Altar-piece (in part) ee rsa0, 
perhaps earlier 

The Peruzzi Chapel, Santa Croce after 1320 
The Bardi Chapel, 5 about 1325 


6é 


The Dormition of the Virgin, at Berlin 1325 
Madonna, Ancona, Bologna (design only) a sheet 


NOTES 475 


The Paradise in the Bargello after 1330 

Part of the Magdalen Legends there 

Part of the Magdalen Legends, Lower Church, Assisi 

Baroncelli Altar-piece (design only) 

Small panels of the Life of Christ 

at New York, Fenway Court, Boston; 

Munich and Berenson Collection, 

Settignano (bottega works) 

8. Padre Angelis, Collis Paradisi, 1704, I, p. 33. 

9. About the 28 stories of St. Francis there is no agreement except tliat 
Nos. I and XXVI-VIII are by the “Cecelia Master.”’ Venturi sees Giotto only 
in the later stories. I agree with Berenson that the ruder frescoes, II-XVIII, 
which are based on the so-called Roman work above show us Giotto at his 
beginnings. For the various views consult Brown and Rankin, 4 Short History, 
pp. 48-9, 59, 61. . 

10. Alex. Romdahl’s attempt to set the upper row many years later than the 
rest is entirely unconvincing to me. See fabrbuch der K. Preussischen Kunst- 
sammlungen, 1911, pp. 3-18. 

11. John Ruskin, Mornings in Florence, passim. 

12. Giotto’s Followers. Oswald Sirén, Giotto and Some of his Followers, 
see note 7, may be freely consulted for illustrations and very cautiously for 
attributions. 

13. Peleo Bacci’s ascription of the recently discovered Passion frescoes in 
the Badia to Buffalmacco seems reasonable, Bollettino d’ Arte, V (1911) pp. 1-27. 
Dr. Sirén ascribes these frescoes to Nardo di Cione and follows Venturi in identi- 
fying Buffalmacco with the “Cecelia Master.” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 
XXXVI, p. 10. The hypothesis still lacks solid foundation. 

14. By Vasari the Spanish Chapel was divided between Taddeo Gaddi and 
Simone Martini. C. &. C. discovered that the work was by an Andrea da 
Firenze who as a document attests painted stories of S. Ranieri at Pisa, in 1377. 
The contract which proves this Andrea to have been Andrea Bonaiuti, active 
1343-77, was published in Arte e Storia, Florence, Feb., 1917, p. 34. It gives 
the date of the contract for the Spanish Chapel, 1365. 

The very elaborate decoration of the Spanish Chapel is fully described 
in C. &. C. (Hutton) Vol. I., pp. 309-312. There are useful literary illustrations 
in Venturi, Storia dell’ arte italiana, Vol. V., pp. 792-809. Ruskin in Mornings 
in Florence gives a partial analysis which is fascinating from a literary point of 
view, but badly overestimates the merit of the work. 


CHAPTER II.— SIENA 
GENERAL WorKS: 
Langton Douglas. 4 History of Siena. New York, 1902. 
Ferdinand Schevill. Siena, the Story of a Medieval Commune, New York, 
1909. 
Edmund G. Gardiner. The Story of Siena and San Gemignano, London, 


1902. 
William Heywood and Lucy Olcott. Guide to Siena, History and Art, 
London, 1903. 


476 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


PAINTING, THE SCHOOL. 

Emil Jacobsen. Sienesische Meister des Trecento in der Gemalde Galerie zu 
Siena, Strassburg, 1907; Das Quattrocento in Siena, Strassburg, 1908; 
Sodoma und das Cinquecento in Siena, Strassburg, 1910; all very 
valuable for illustrations. 

Venturi, Storia dell’ Arte Italiana, Vols. V and VII. 

Bernard Berenson, Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, New York 
and London, 1909. 

C. Ricci, [1 Palazzo Pubblico di Siena e la Mostra d’ Antica Arte Senese, 
Bergamo, 1904, offers a good and inexpensive survey of Sienese 
handicraft in general. 


SIENESE PICTURES IN THE UNITED States. Consult the illustrated catalogues 
of the Fogg Museum, Harvard; and of the Jarves Collection, Yale. Also 
many special articles in Art in America, expecially the series in Vol. VIII- 
IX, by F. Mason Perkins, Some Sienese Paintings in American Collections. 


1. The fact that the Madonna of the Palazzo Pubblico had been much re- 
painted in Duccio’s time not unnaturally threw Milanesi and other critics off 
the track. But the date is entirely genuine (see C. &¥ C. [Douglas] Vol. I, p. 162, 
note 1*; and E. Jacobsen, Das Trecento, p. 18). The latter writes, “The sig- 
nature and date are genuine. There is no tenable ground for doubting them.” 

I have satisfied myself by close inspection that such is the case, and the half 
dozen or so other panels associated with this Madonna stylistically all seem to 
belong to the first half of the 13th century. 

2. Siren, Burlington Magazine, XXXII (1918) p. 45, ascribes this panel to 
Cavallini. Berenson in Dedalo, Vol. II, fasc. v, allots it to Constantinople 
at the end of the 12th century. Neither view is even plausible to me. 

3. Duccio. A. Lisini, Notizie di Duccio &c. Siena, 1898. Curt Weigelt, 
Duccio di Buoninsegna, Leipzig, 1911, the standard monograph, well 
illustrated. 

4. The whole matter of the Rucellai Madonna is well discussed by Douglas 
in his edition of C. &%. C., Vol. I. Appendix to chapter VI. Andreas Aubert, 
Cimabue, p. 138 ff., and Curt Weigelt, Duccio, both agree that the Rucellai 
Madonna is the picture called for by the contract of 1285, hence is by Duccio. 
Aside from many stylistic similarities to Duccio’s early Madonna with Fran- 
ciscans in the Siena Academy, the exquisitely drawn bare feet of the Angels 
in the Rucellai Madonna amount almost to a signature for Siena’s greatest 
painter. H. Thode and O. Sirén hold that a picture designed and begun by 
Duccio was finished by Cimabue, Toskanische Maler, pp. 308-9, and note 41 
to latter page. The hypothesis that Duccio was strongly influenced by Cimabue 
in this work seems simpler. 

s. The contract is worth quoting in part from G. Fontana, Due documenti 
inediti riguardanti Cimabue, Pisa, 1878; it is reprinted in Strzygowski, Cimabue 
und Rom, Wien, 1888. The papers were recovered from a grocer who was 
_ about to use them for wrappers. 

“Which picture of the Majesty of Divine and Blessed Virgin Mary and 


of the Apostles and other saints is to be made in columns and in the predella 
and [main] spaces of the picture good and pure florin gold shall be used; the 


NOTES 477 


other pictures which are to be made in the aforesaid panel above the columns 
in tabernacles, gables, and frames shall be made . . . of good silver gilt.” 


The picture apparently was a polyptych of three, five, or seven panels 
with columns and round arches, with an upper order of gables and 
tabernacles. It seems to have been the first well-peopled Madonna in 
Majesty, and it probably served as Duccio’s exemplar. ‘Cimabue died before 
finishing it, but since in Nov. 1302 he received a large installment of 40 
Pisan lire, he must at least have fully drawn the composition on the panel. 

6. Simone Martini. See the standard work by Raimond van Marle, 
Simone Martini, Strasbourg, 1920. 

There is considerable difference among critics in dating these frescoes, and 
no objective evidence. The early date, 1322-25, suggested by Venturi and 
Van Marle, is confirmed by the stylistic character of the work. It lacks the 
calligraphic, linear formulas which abound in Simone’s works after 1330. 
The early date also agrees with the general probabilities of the course of events 
in the decoration of the Lower Church at Assisi. 

7. Frey’s ed. Berlin, 1886, p. 42. : 

8. The contract for this altar-piece is translated in the illustrations to chap- 
ter II, p. 100. 

g. Venturi, Vol. V, pp. 680-694, offers a sensible compromise view of the 
authorship of this series, assigning to Pietro himself only the Deposition, 
Entombment, Stigmatization of St. Francis and a Madonna and Saints, 
ascribing most of the subjects to an assistant. Dr. Ernest Dewald in a forth- 
coming Princeton dissertation takes a more skeptical view than Venturi as to 
Pietro’s presence at Assisi. 

10. However the “Cecelia Master,” active about 1300, deals ably with 
such spatial problems. See O. Sirén, Burlington Magazine, Vol. XXXIV, 
p. 234, and XXXVI, p. 4. and Giotto, plates 11-13, Vol. II. 

11. Sassetta. Bernard Berenson. A Painter of the Franctscan Legend, 
(Sassetta), London and New York, 1909. 

12. Matteo di Giovanni. We have the standard work of G. Hartlaub, Matteo 
da Siena, Strassburg, 1910. Mr. Berenson in Essays in the Study of Sienese 
Painting, New York, 1918, essay on Cozzarelli, has made useful criticisms of 
the list of pictures usually ascribed to Matteo. 

13. Sodoma. Hobart Cust, Giovanni Antonio Bazz1, usually styled “ Sodoma,”’ 
New York, 1906. 


CHAPTER III.— MASACCIO AND THE NEW REALISM 


On the general matter of the realists of the Early Renaissance not much has 
been added to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, but Mr. Berenson’s comment in Floren- 
tine Painters and Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance is of high critical 
value. Vasari is interesting, but never more inaccurate than when dealing 
with this group. As usual the latest collected information is in Venturi. Storza, 
Vol. VII, part I, and elsewhere. 

1. Matteo Villani, storie, Florence, 1581, Lib. I, cap. iv, pp. 5-6. 
2. Lorenzo Monaco. The standard work is by O. Siren, Don Lorenzo 
Monaco, Strassburg, 1905. 


478 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


3. Fra Angelico. Langton Douglas. Fra Angelico, London and New 
York, 1900. 

Vasari’s Life is admirable and in essentials correct. 

4. Masolino-Masaccio. The summary in C. &. C. (Douglas) Vol. IV; 
(Hutton), Vol. II, reasonably brings the controversy up to date. The latest 
review is by Dr. Richard Offner, Art in America, Vol. VIII, pp. 68-76, 4 Sz. 
Yerome by Masolino. Dr. Offner, in Dedalo, Mar., 1923, publishes a fine St. 
Julian, by Masolino, which reveals in a new light that artist’s romantic 
temperamentalism. Mr. Berenson, l.c., publishes a predella piece for the 
same panel. 

The large album of plates accompanying August H. Schmarsow’s Masaccio, 
der Begriinder des Klassischen Stils &c. Kassel, 1900, is indispensable to the 
serious student. It is available in the great libraries. Cuts of all the works 
involved in the controversy are more readily attainable in P. Toesca’s Masolino 
da Panicale, Bergamo, 1908, and in Venturi, Stora, Vol. VII, pt. I. 

5. The rider with his back turned at the left of the fresco of the Calvary 
has a rondel protecting the nape of his neck. It is a short-lived and unsuccess- 
ful invention which was not used before 1435-40. ‘This information, which I 
owe to Dr. Bashford Dean of the Metropolitan Museum, dates the Calvary 
well after Masaccio’s death, and, inferentially, all the other frescoes in the 
same chapel. 

6. Cassont and other Furniture Panels. The standard work is by Paul 
Schubring, Cassoni &c. Leipzig, 1915. 

Many of the examples in American Collections have been published and 
discussed by William Rankin and myself in the Burlington Magazine, Vol. 
VIII, [X. See also a popular sketch by me in Arts and Decoration, Dec. ’os. 
The furnishing and decoration of a patrician Florentine house in the 15th 
century is learnedly and delightfully treated by A. Schiaparelli, La Casa 
fiorentina &c., Florence, 1908. 

7. See my article in Art in America, Vol. VIII, p. 154, and in Arts and Deco- 
ration, Note 6, above. 

8. Masaccio, bibliography in Note 4 above. 

In essentials the view and chronology of Masaccio’s works here given differs 
from Cavalcaselle’s only in relegating the frescoes in S. Clemente to Masolino 
and their proper date in the late 30s or early 40s. In this I have been partially 
anticipated by Pietro Toesca, Masolino da Panicale, Bergamo, 1908. 

The reader may justly wish me to commit myself on this most disputed 
question to the extent of a list. I give it in a tentative chronological order as- 
suming that Masaccio may have begun to work as early as 1420. 


Early Works under Masolino’s influence : 


Madonna and Saints (fresco). Shrine at Montemarciano near S. Giovanni. 

Pieta (fresco). Cathedral, Empoll. 

Miracle of healing by Christ (ruined by repainting). John C. Johnson Coll., 
Philadelphia. 

Madonna and St. Ann. Uffizi, Florence. 

Adam and Eve Tempted (fresco). Brancacci Chapel. 

Resuscitation of Tabitha (fresco). Brancacci Chapel. 


~~ , 


NOTES 479 


Later Works: 


St. Peter Preaching (fresco, possibly earlier). Brancacci Chapel. 
Birth of St. John (salver). Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin. 
Polyptych for the Carmine, Pisa, 1426. 
The Madonna, some small pilaster pieces, and a small rondel with bust 
of God Father. National Gallery, London. 
Three predella panels (largely school work) and some small pilaster 
pieces. Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin. 
Crucifixion central pinnacle. Naples Museum. 
A Saint (upper order). Civic Museum, Pisa. 
A Saint (upper order). Lanckoronski, Vienna. 
The Trinity (fresco). S. Maria Novella, Florence. 
All the remaining frescoes of the Brancacci Chapel save the parts and panels 
now universally assigned to Filippino Lippi. 
g. Schmarsow, Masaccio Studien, bd. 3. p. 27, 8 
10. Andrea del Castagno, see the important articles by Herbert P. Horne in 
the Burlington Magazine, Vol. VII, 1905. Richard Offner, in 47t in America, 
Vol. VII, pp. 227-35, first published the admirable portrait in Mr. Morgan’s 
Library, New York. A magnificent tournament shield with the figure of a 
David is in the Widener Collection, Elkins Park, Penna., and was first pub- 
lished by Guido Cagnola in Rassegna d’ Arte, Vol. XIII (1913), p. 49. 
Andrea worked at Venice in 1442. See G. Fiocca, Burlington Magazine, 
Vol Qh vo att. 
11. Alesso Baldovinetti. See E. Londi, Alesso Baldovinetti, Firenze, 1907. 


CHAPTER IV.—FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND THE NEW 
PARRALIVE STYLE 


1. Fra Filippo Lippi. Edward C. Strutt,, Fra Filippo Lippi, London, 
1906. Vasari’s Life is capital. Robert Browning’s poem, in Men and Women, 
an admirable side-light. 

2. Benozzo Gozzoli. I accept Col. G. F. Young’s date for these frescoes. 
See The Medici, New York, 1909, Vol. I., Chapter vit, where there is a good 

. analysis of this decoration. 

3. Antonio Pollaiuolo. Maud Crutwell’s Antonio Pollaiuolo, London and 
New York, 1907. For later information consult Venturi, Soria, Vol. VII, 
pt. I, pp. 558-578. 

4. Piero della Francesca. W.G. Waters, Piero della Francesca, London, 
1901; and Corrado Ricci’s superbly illustrated folio, Piero della Francesca, 
Rome, IgIo. 

5. Early Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. Magnificently reproduced in the 
album accompanying Ernst Steinmann’s Die Sixtinische Cappelle, Munich, 
I9OI. 

6. Francesco Pesellino. Consult Dr. W. Weisbach’s able and beautifully 
illustrated work, Francesco Pesellino und die Romantik der Fribrenatssance, 
Berlin, 1901. For cuts of Cassoni, Paul Schubring, Cassoni, Leipzig, 1915, 
and the books and articles already cited in note 6 to Chapter 3. 


480 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


7. Domenico Ghirlandaio. A copious and satisfactory life is that of Gerald 
S. Davies, Ghirlandato, London and New York, 1909. Briefer but of greater 
cultural scope is Ghirlandato, by Henri Hauvette, Paris, “Les maitres de l’art.” 
For a summary criticism my article in The Nation (N. Y.), Aug. 20, 1908, 
p. 167. Ruskin’s famous assault on Ghirlandaio in Mornings in Florence is 
joyous reading if whimsically exaggerated. 


CHAPTER V.— BOTTICELLI AND LEONARDO DA VINCI 


1. Botticelli. The standard work is Herbert P. Horne, Sandro Botticelli, 
London, 1908. A little additional information may be found in Crowe and 
Cavalcaselle, 4 History of Painting in Italy, Hutton Ed. Vol. II, and in 
Venturi, Storia dell’ Arte Italiana, Vol. VII, pt. 1. 

Walter Pater’s essay in The Renatssance offers beautifully a one-sided view. 
The essays, the Soul of a Fact, and Quattrocentisteria, in Maurice Hewlett’s 
Earthwork out of Tuscany are poetically illuminative. Mr. Berenson’s analysis 
in Florentine Painters of the Renaissance is important. I have written more 
fully on Botticelli in Estimates in Art, New York, 1912. 

Botticelli’s Dante illustrations are published in a cheaper and more sumptuous 
form by Friedrich P. Lippmann. Botticelli, Zeichnungen von Sandro Botticelli, 
Berlin, 1896. 

Lists of Botticelli’s works differ considerably. I incline to accept a number 
of early paintings which are neglected by such exclusive critics as Berenson 
and Horne. My own list, which for reasons of space cannot be given here, 
would not differ much from that of A. Venturi, in Storia VII, i, 588-642. 

2. Filippino Lippi. I. B. Supino, Les deux Lippi, Firenze, 1904. 

3. Piero di Cosimo. Fritz Knapp, Piero di Cosimo, Halle, 1899. As usual 
later information in Venturi, Storia, Vol. VII, pt. 1. 

4. This extraordinary series of which four have been recovered is fully dis- 
cussed and somewhat differently interpreted by Roger E. Fry, in Burlington 
Magazine, Vol. XX XVIII, p. 131 f. See also letter on page 257. 

5. Leonardo da Vinci. The standard life is by W. von Seidlitz, Leonardo 
da Vinct, Berlin, 1909. The early work of Leonardo and his relations with 
Verrocchio have been thoroughly and lucidly analyzed by Jens Thys, Leonardo 
da Vinct, London, 1913. Amid the confusingly rich bibliography, the student 
may do well to stick to Vasari’s admirable Life in any of the translations, to 
Dr. O. Sirén’s scholarly and cautious book Leonardo da Vinci, New Haven, 
and London, 1916 and to the late Dr. J. P. Richter’s incomparable work “The 
Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci,’ London, 1883, obtainable only in 
libraries. Giovanni Poggi, Leonardo da Vinci, Firenze, 1919, has thoroughly 
edited Vasari’s Life, and should be consulted for latest views and for illustra- 
tions. My own view on the early development of Leonardo, a most disputed 
matter, is set forth more fully in Art and Archeology, Vol. IV. pp. 111-122. 

For literary side-lights Walter Pater’s essay, in The Renaissance; for an icono- 
clastic view Berenson in Study and Criticism of Italian Art, Fourth Series, 
New York, 1920. Edward McCurdy’s selected translations from The Note- 
books of Leonardo da Vinci, New York, 1906, are valuable for those to whom 


NOTES 481 


Richter is inaccessible. Leonardo’s ‘drawings, which are no less important than 
his paintings, may best be approached through Mr. Berenson’s monumental 
work, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, New York and London, 1903, 
while the drawings before 1480 are clearly and ably discussed by Dr. Thys. 

6. The capital mistake of the more exclusive critics of Leonardos early 
’ work is that they set this delightful little masterpiece at the beginning of the 
series in an impossibly early date. There is no such manipulation of paint and 
no such feeling for unity of landscape before 1475 or so. Being a revision of 
the design of the Uffizi Annunciation, it is necessarily later. 


My list of Leonardo’s would include, in approximate order: 


1. In Verocchio’s Baptism. The landscape at left and distance, the Angel 
kneeling to right, about 1470, Uf_izi. 

2. Madonna and Child with an Angel, design by Verrocchio, London. 

3. The Annunciation, design mostly by Verrocchio, about 1475. Uffizi. 

4. Portrait of a Girl, possibly a Verrocchio, Prince Liechtenstein, Vienna. 

5. Annunciation, Louvre. 

6. Benois Madonna, about 1478-9, Petrograd. 

7. St. Jerome, unfinished, Vatican, Rome. 

8. Adoration of the Magi, left unfinished about 1481, Uffizi. 

g. Cartoon of St. Ann, Burlington House, London. 
to. Madonna of the Rocks, between 1480-83, Paris. 
11. So-called Belle Ferronniére, perhaps bottega piece, about 1490, Paris. 
12. Girl with an Ermine, perhaps a bottega piece, about 1495, Cracow. 
13. Clay model of the Sforza horse, destroyed in 1500. 
14. Last Supper, 1498, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. 
15. Cartoon for a St. Ann, lost but represented by sketches at Venice, 1503. 
16. Madonna of the Distaff, represented by old copies. 
17. Cartoon for Battle of Anghiari, only central group painted, partly repre- 

sented by sketches and old copies, 1504. 

18. Portrait of Mona Lisa, Paris. 

19. Cartoon for a standing Leda, probably only the figure, since numerous 
old copies have widely varying accessories. 

20. Madonna of the Rocks, 1507, London. 

21. Cartoon for a Kneeling Leda, the figure only. Sketches and old copies 

22. Madonna and St. Ann, Paris. 

23. St. John, half-length, Paris. 

All Leonardo’s main activity as a painter lies from 1470-1500. He painted 
a picture about every two years.. 

Various sculptures have been ascribed to Leonardo. Of these only two, 
which will have been made in Verrocchio’s bottega and under his direction, 
seem to me to deserve the distinction. A terra cotta Madonna and Child in 
the Metropolitan Museum, there ascribed to Verrocchio’s school, may repre- 
sent Leonardo’s modelling about 1465. A stucco Madonna owned by Mr. 
George Diblee, at Oxford, is perhaps ten years later. The first is discussed 
by me in Art and Archaeology, Vol. IV, p. 122; the second is reproduced and 
accepted as a Leonardo by Prof. A. Venturi in L’ Arte, Vol. XXV, p. 131. 


7. The best study of this picture and of its contemporary influence is that 
of George Gronau in Zettschrift fur bildende Kunst. N. F. Vol. XXIII, pp. 


482 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


253-259. He fails to perceive that so primitive a picture zs late as 1478 
furnishes the best reason for accepting most of the rejected early Leonardos. 

8. In all this matter Jens Thys’s admirable studies are indispensable. 
See note 5 above. 

g. The Lady and the Ermine and the Belle Ferronniére are thoroughly dis- , 
cussed by H. Ochenkowski, Burlington Magazine, Vol. XXXIV, p. 186 f., where 
a full bibliography will be found. 

10. This error which has persisted since Vasari was finally corrected by 
the great restorer Cavenaghi in his report of the last restoration. Malaguzzi 
Valeri in Milano, Bergamo, 1906, pt. 2, p. 14, first advanced the correct view 
that the painting was done in tempera. 

11. Kenyon Cox, Concerning Painting, New York, 1917, p. 73. 

12. Fra Bartolommeo. The standard work is Fritz Knapp’s Fra Bartolom- 
meo della Porta, Halle, 1903. H. v. d. Gablentz, Fra Bartolommeo in 2 vols., 
Leipzig, 1922. 

13. Andrea del Sarto. H. Guinness, Andrea del Sarto, London and New 
York, 1901. Andrea’s drawings are finely analyzed by Bernard Berenson in 
The Drawings of the Florentine Painters. 

14. Bronzino. Hans Schulze, Die Werke Angelo Bronzino’s, Strassburg, 
IQII. 

15. Pontormo. We have two admirable books by the same writer, Dr. 
F. M. Clapp; Les Dessins de Pontormo, Paris, 1914; Pontormo, his Lije and 
Work, New Haven, 1916. 

Pontormo’s supreme masterpiece of portraiture, The Halberdier, is pub- 
lished by myself in Art in America, Vol. X, p. 66. 

AvpEeNpDum. Mr. Yashiro’s beautiful and ccstly three volumes on Botti- 
celli, London: The Medici Society, 1925, supersedes the earlier authorities. 


CHAPEER eI 


Tue Hicw Renarssance. ‘The indispensable books are, for leading ideas, 
J. C. Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, New York, 1890; 
for the stylistic development in Art, H. Wolfflin, The Art of the Italian Renais- 
sance, New York, 1913. Very valuable for history and biography are J. Ad- 
dington Symonds’s The Renaissance in Italy, 5 Vols., London; and H. O. 
Taylor’s Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century, New York, 1920. 
For Renaissance ideals of nobility and moderation the capital contemporary 
work is J] Cortegiano, by Baldassare Castiglione, translated as The Courtier 
by L. E. Updycke, New York, 1905. For stylistic analysis Berenson’s intro- 
ductions to Florentine Painters, and to Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, 
are suggestive and important. 

1. Gentile da Fabriano. A. Colasanti, Gentile da Fabiano. Bergamo, 1909. 
Also my Essay review. The Nation, Vol. 89 (1909) pp. 168-170. 

2. Andrea da Bologna. The Nation (N. Y.) Vol. 95. (1912) p. 392. 

3. Fifteenth Century Umbrians. Walter Rothes, in Anfange . . . der Alt- 
Umbrischen Malerschulen, Strassburg, 1908, gives excellent illustrations for 
the Early Umbrian Artists. Also for cuts, U. Gnoli, La Mostra Umbra, Bergamo. 

4. Melozzo da Forlt. A. Schmarsow, Melozzo da Forli, Berlin, 1886, and C. 
Ricci, Melozzo da Forli, Rome, 1911, are the standard works. 


NOTES | 483 


5. Luca Signorelli. Maud Crutwell, Luca Signorelli, London, 1901. See 
Venturi, vil, as usual. 

6. Pietro Perugino. Venturi, Storia, Vol. VII, pt. 2, ch. v, makes Perugino 
the direct pupil of Piero della Francesca, ascribing to Perugino many pictures 
formerly ascribed to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. The view while attractive is not 
wholly convincing to me. All of Perugino’s works are published in Klassiker 
der Kunst, No. XXV, Stuttgart, 1914. The best general estimate of Perugino 
is that of Wolfflin and of Berenson, in Central Italian Painters. 

7. The Cambio frescoes. While it is inherently likely that Raphael worked 
on these frescoes, Prof. Venturi’s plea for Raphael’s authorship of God, the 
Prophets and Sibyls, Storia, Vol. VII, pt. 2, p. 828 7. depends largely on the 
shaky evidence of drawings attributed arbitrarily to Raphael. 

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO. From the point of view of pure style the best 
treatment of these artists and of the High Renaissance is that of Heinrich 
Wofflin in The Art of the Italian Renaissance, New York, 1913. It is a book 
that every student should read and if possible own. Mr. Berenson’s treatment 
of space composition, in the introduction to Central Italian Painter: of the 
Renaissance, is perhaps his finest achievement in criticism. 

8. Raphael. Hermann Grimm’s two volume Life of Raphael is still valuable 
for background. Among the numerous popular books in English none is out- 
standing. Henry Strachey’s Raphael, in “Great Masters of Art,” is good, and 
so are Julia Cartwright’s two monographs: The Early Work of Raphael and 
Raphael in Rome, in the Portfolio Series, London, 1895. 

For Raphael’s participation in the frescoes of the Cambio it seems to me 
that Professor Venturi, in Storia dell’ Arte Italiana, Vol. VII, part 2, makes out 
only a plausible case. 

Reproductions of all of Raphael’s works in Klasstker der Kunst, No. L, 
Raphael, Stuttgart and Leipzig. 

Among the innumerable essays on Raphael none is more understand- 
ing than John La Farge’s, in Great Masters, New York, 1903. 

9. Michelangelo. The best source for the study of Michelangelo, painter, 
is the superb plates in Ernst Steinmann’s Die Sixtinische Cappelle, Munich, 
1g01. Among recent short biographies that of Charles Holroyd, Michelangelo, 
London and New York, 1911 and Romain Rolland (a longer study, The Life of 
Michelangelo, New York, 1912; a different and shorter work, Michelangelo, a 
Study, &3c., New York, 1915) are perhaps the best. The two volume biogra- 
phies by Hermann Grimm and by J. Addington Symonds are valuable, especially 
for historical background. But the reader may be wise to content himself with 
one of the brief biographies and such contemporary lives as Vasari’s, Ascanio 
Condivi’s, and Francesco d’Olanda’s. The two latter are translated in Hol- 
royd’s book. The drawings of Michelangelo are admirably discussed and pre- 
sented in a perfect selection by Mr. Berenson in The Drawings of the Florentine 
Painters. The drawings are chronologically arranged and beautifully repro- 
duced by Karl Frey, Die Handzeichnungen Michelagnolo’s, 2 vols., Berlin, 
1911. W. R. Valentiner treats The Late Years of Michelangelo (New York, 
1914) with insight, devoting himself chiefly to the more finished drawings. 
For a brief yet comprehensive survey, John La Farge in Great Masters, New 
York, 1903. The works are completely reproduced in Klassiker der Kunst, 
No. VII. Michelangelo, Stuttgart and Leipzig. 


484 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


CHAPTER VII.— EARLY VENETIAN PAINTING 


1. Little literature of a general sort is available to the English speaking 
reader. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 4 History of Painting in Northern Italy, 
admirably edited by Tancred Borenius, in three volumes, London, 1913, 1s 
the chief repository of facts. Evelyn March Phillipps, The Venetian School 
of Painting, London, 1912, is an excellent brief survey. For readers of 
Italian Lionello Venturi’s Le Origini della Pittura Veneziana, Venice, 1911, 
is the best book. A treasure house of materials in Laudadeo Testi’s two 
volumes, La Storia della Pittura Veneziana, Bergamo. John Ruskin’s master- 
piece, Stones of Venice, may be consulted with profit and delight. There 
are treasures of antiquarian information in Pompeo Molmenti, La Storia di 
Venezia nella Vita Privata, 3 vols., Bergamo, 1905. 

2. Facopo Bellini. The extraordinary and fascinating sketch books are 
published in two forms, by Corrado Ricci, Facopo Bellini e 1 suo libri di designt, 
2 vols., Florence, 1908, and by V. Goloubew, Les Dessins de Facopo Bellini, 
Bruxelles, 1908. 

3. G. McNeill Rushforth, Carlo Crivelli, London, 1900. 

4. Andrea Mantegna. The standard work is by Paul Kristeller, Andrea 
Mantegna, London and New York, 1901. Maud Crutwell’s short biography, 
Andrea Mantegna, London, 1901, is excellent. Mr. Berenson’s subtle analysis 
in North Italian Painters of the Renaissance perhaps overstresses Andrea’s 
defects. Mantegna’s complete works are reproduced in Klassiker der Kunst, 
No. XVI, Stuttgart, 1910. 

s. Antonello da Messina. See L. Venturi, Le Origini, and A. Venturi, 
Storia, VII, pt. 4. Recent attributions, Bernard Berenson, Study and Criti- 
cism of Italian Art, 3rd Series, London, 1916, p. 79 ff. 

6. Giovanni Bellini. Nothing notable in English except casual criticism by 
Ruskin and Roger E. Fry’s admirable little book, Giovanni Bellini, London, 
1899, which is unfortunately out of print. For such as read German — Georg 
Gronau, Die Kiinstler-familie Bellini, Leipzig, 1907, with abundant illustrations. 
Recently discovered pictures and a better chronology, in Bernard Berenson: 
Venetian Painting in America, New York, 1916. 

7. Vettor Carpaccio. Ludwig and Molmenti’s The Life and Works of Vic- 
tor Carpaccio, London, 1907, gives, aside from its main topic, a vivid picture 
of the cultural condition of Venice about 1500. See my essay-review of it in 
The Nation, Vol. 86, (1908) pp. 315 f#. John Ruskin’s delightful comments 
on Carpaccio are mostly in the Guide to the Academy at Venice and in St. Mark’s 
Rest, chapter The Shrine of the Slaves, Library ed. Vol. XXIV. 

8. Giorgione. For the smallest list L. Venturi, Giorgione e il Giorgionismo, 
Milan, 1913; for the longest list Herbert Cook, Giorgione; for a middle view 
L. Justi, Giorgione, 2 vols., Berlin, 1908, most useful plates. 

The general conditions of the problem are clearly stated by the late Richard 
Norton in Bernini and other Studies, New York,1914. L. Hourticq, in La Feunesse 
de Titien, Paris, 1919, has lately worked over the pictures which lie between 
Titian and Giorgione in an interesting but highly subjective fashion. Kenyon 
Cox, Art in America, Vol. I, pp. 115 ff, makes the plausible suggestion that 


7 ae 


NOTES 485 


the several portraits signed V or VV are by Titian, the letters meaning 
Vecellius Venetus. This would make the Berlin portrait a ‘Titian. 

Walter Pater’s essay on The School of Giorgione, in The Renaissance is as 
masterly for insight as it is for verbal beauty. 

I hesitate to add one more to the varying opinions concerning 
Giorgione’s paintings. At least I may introduce a novelty by classing them ac- 
cording to probability, or rather according to the completeness of my own 
conviction. In the whole matter we are largely in the field of taste and opinion. 
E means early. 


Paintings, m. 7. surely by Giorgione 
1. The Shepherds finding the Infant Paris (repainted fragment, E) Buda- 


2. “The Soldier and the Gipsy” E. Prince Giovanelli 

3. Madonna with St. Francis and St. George (1504) Castelfranco 

4. The Three Philosophers (finished by Sebastiano del Piombo) Vienna 
5. Orpheus and Eurydice (cassone panel) Bergamo 

6. The Sleeping Venus (landscape by Titian) Dresden 

7. Fresco of Nude Woman, nearly effaced (1508), represented by Zanetti’s 

print Fondaco de’ Tedeschi 

8. Judith (cut down at sides) Petrograd 

g. His own Portrait (much cut down and damaged) Brunswick 

to. Christ with his Cross Church of S. Rocco 
11. The Concert (finished by Titian? or repainted in his manner?) Florence 


Paintings probably by Giorgione. I accept these, but do not think the evi- 
dence demonstrative. 

12-13. Stories of the Infant Paris (two cassone panels, E.) Sir Martin 
Conway, Allington Castle, Maidstone, England 


14. The Fire Ordeal of Moses (door panel, E.) Florence 

15. The Judgment of Solomon “ 

16. Christ bearing his Cross, E. Fenway Court, Boston. 

17. Homage to a Poet, E. London 

18. Portrait of a Young Man (possibly an early Titian) Berlin 

19. Boy With an Arrow (old copy?) Vienna 

20. Shepherd with a Flute Hampton Court 

21. David with Goliath’s Head (copy? or ruined original?) Vienna 

22. Altar-piece of St. John Chrysostom (mostly executed by Sebastiano del 
Piombo) S. Giovanni Crisostomo 

23. The Pastoral Symphony (radically repainted in recent times.) Paris 

24. Portrait of aMan New York 


This list might still be extended by half a dozen numbers by including 
pictures which may represent lost originals by Giorgione, but here we are in 
a field too subjective for profitable discussion in a handbook. 


Pictures generally ascribed to Giorgione, I think erroneously. 

The Knight of Malta (probably a Titian about 1515) Florence 
Portrait of Broccardo Budapest 

Storm Calmed by St. Mark (probably a Palma) Venice 


486 NOTES ON ITALIAN PAINTING 


Judgment of Solomon (Hourticq plausibly regards as copy of lost fresco by 
Titian) Banks Coll., Kingston Lacy 

Madonna with St. Antony and St. Roch (probably a Titian) Madrid 

Portrait of a Woman Casino Borghese, Rome 

The reason for excluding such works is their over-pathetic or over-dramatic 
quality. The argument applies especially to the Adulteress before Christ at 
Glasgow. Corroborative technical evidence against this group may be found 
in L. Venturi’s excellent monograph. 


CHAPTER VIII.— TITIAN AND THE VENETIAN 
RENAISSANCE 


On the Venetian Renaissance in general we have the works cited at the head 
of Notes for Chapter VII and for biographies and lists D. V. Hadeln, new 
ed. Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell’ Arte, Berlin, 1914. A brief survey by the late 
Kenyon Cox, in Concerning Painting, New York, 1917, pp. 98-132, is valuable. 


1. Titian. Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s The Life and Times of Titian, in 2 vols., 
London, 1881, is still the fullest repository of information. Georg Gronau’s 
popular but carefully done Titian, London and New York, 1904, takes account 
of later documentary discoveries. As a painter’s analysis of technical aims 
Charles Rickett’s Titian, London, 1910, is noteworthy. Nearly all of Titian’s 
works are published in Klassiker der Kunst, No. III, Stuttgart, 1996. Several 
newly discovered pictures are reproduced in the recent volumes, 1918-22, of 
the Burlington Magazine, Art in America, and Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst. 

2. Titian’s Age. All the available material on this disputed matter is 
offered by Mr. Herbert Cook and Dr. George Gronau in a controversy printed 
as appendices to Cook’s Giorgione, London, 1907. ‘The early evidence is very 
conflicting. 

Writing in 1557 ~=Dolce implies Titian was born about 1489 

<1 566-9. Vasari ic he oF * 1489 

1564 A Spanish Envoy ee oy ae: 

1567. A Spanish Consul Ngee Tae 
1g71. Jitian himself Saas ee Bae eds F Wege 
1584 Borghini 1478-9 

Writing in 1545 and 1548 Titian refers to his old age and disabilities (Cook, 
p. I4I note), expressions more natural if he was sixty-eight and seventy-one 
than they would be if he were only fifty-six and fifty-nine. 

Mr. Cook’s theory that Titian and his Spanish official friends grossly ex- 
aggerated his age to secure prompter remittances from the Emperor seems to 
me gratuitous and flimsy. Dr. Gronau convinces me that neither Dolce nor 
Vasari can be regarded as serious witnesses. L. Hourticq in La Feunesse de 
Titien, Paris, 1919, adds next to nothing to Cook in maintaining the later 
date for Titian’s birth. 

The whole weight of evidence points to the fact that Titian told the broad 
truth about his age, perhaps, indulging in a round number. I am sure he was 
well over ninety when he described himself as ninety-five in the letter of 1571, 
and that he died all but a centenarian. 


* 
n 
na 
”~ 


6c é 


ce ¢ 


n 


6c ce ce ing 


NOTES 487 


3. Pietro d’Achiardi, Sebastiano de Piombo, Roma, 1908. , 

4. Max von Boehn, Giorgione und Palma Vecchio, Leipzig, 1908. 

5. Bernard Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto, London, 1905. Comprises also careful 
studies of Alvise Vivarini, Cima, Montagna and other Venetic painters. In 
The Study and Criticism of Italian Art, 3rd series, London, 1916, the superb 
Saint Justine of the Valsecchi Collection is rightly restored to Giovanni Bel- 
lini, l.c. p. 38 ff. 

6. Correggio. The standard work, C. Ricci, Antonio Allegri da Coreggio, 
New York, 1896. A delightful critical study, T. Sturge Moore, Correggio, 
London and New York, 1906. The complete works in Klassiker der Kunst, 
No. XVII, Stuttgart. 

A new and convincing view of Correggio’s date of birth and early develop- 
ment in Venturi, Storia, Vol. VII, pt. i, pp. 1152 ff. 

7. Evelyn ‘March Phillipps, Tintoretto, London, 1911. Many of the extraor- 
dinary tempera sketches are reproduced in the Burlington Magazine for Janu- 
ary and February, 1910. H. Thode, Tintoretto, Leipzig, 1901. 

Many eloquent criticisms by Ruskin in Modern Painters and Stones of Venice 
(see indices) and in the Guide to the Academy at Venice, Library ed. Vol. XXIV. 

8. Paolo Veronese. See Kenyon Cox’s masterly essay in Old Masters and 
New, New York. 

9. G. B. Tiepolo. The standard work is by Pompeo Molmenti. G. B. 
Tiepolo, Milan, 1909. 

10. G. A. Simonson. Francesco Guardi, London, 1905. Numerous additions 
by the same author in the Burlington Magazine for succeeding years. 


oe eet TE REALISTS AND ECLECTICS 


On this period there is little available literature in English, but there are ex- 
cellent sketches of most of the artists treated in this chapter in C. Ricci, Art 
in Northern Italy, New York, I1g1t. 

A. Peraté in A. Michel, Histoire de ? Art, Vol. V2, gives a fuller summary. 

1. Caravaggio. W. Kallab, Austrian fabrbuch, Vol. XXVI (1906), p. 272 ff. 
brief illustrated essay. Felix Witting, Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Strassburg, 
1916. 

2. Salvator Rosa. Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa, 
in two vols., Paris, 1824. Leandro Ozzola, Vita e opere di Salvator Rosa, 
Strassburg, 1908. 

- The passages translated in the text are from Bottari, Raccolta di lettere sulla 
Pittura &c., Vol. I, pp. 447, 450 f., Milan, 1822. 

3. Ihe Carracct. The fundamental source is Carlo Cesare Malvasia’s 
highly contentious and anecdotal work Felsina Pittrice; I have used the two- 
volume edition, Milan, 1841. 

Gabriel Rouchés, La Peinture Bolonaise a la Findu XVI¢ Siécle, Paris, 1913, 
is the standard work on the Eclectic School. On the landscape of this school, 
which is highly important as preparatory to Claude and Poussin, Rouchés 
has two remarkable essays in Gazette des Beaux Arts, 5° période Tome, III. 
(Jan. and Feb. nos. 1921) pp. 7 ff, and 119 ff. 

Hans Tietze, in Austrian Fabrbuch, Vol. XXVI (1906) p. 51 f., Annibale 


488 NOTES ON ITALIAN PAINTING 


Carracci’s Galerie im Palazzo Farnese und seine Romische Werkstatte — a very 
thorough and richly illustrated monograph on the Carracci, including such 
scholars as Francesco Albani, and Domenichino. 


4. Guido Reni. Max von Boehn, Guido Reni, Leipzig, 1910, fully illus- 
trated. 

5. Domenichino. Luigi Serra, Domenico Zampiert detto Domenichina, 
Rome, 1909. Also Tietze’s article, above, note 3. 


HINTS FOR READING 


CoMPREHENSIVE Histories oF ITaian ParntTinc. For English speaking 
readers the greatest resource for reference is Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 4 New 
History of Painting in Italy, which covers the Central Italian field up to about 
1500. I prefer the three volume edition by Edward Hutton, published by J. M. 
Dent and Co., London; and E. P. Dutton, New York, (1908-9) to the fuller 
six-volume edition annotated by Langton Douglas and published conjointly 
by the Murrays of London and the Scribners of New York. For the North 
Italian field Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s History of Painting in Northern Italy, 
re-edited in three volumes by Tancred Borenius, John Murray- Charles 
Scribner’s Sons, 1912, is indispensable. Both works are ordinarily cited as 
“C.&C.” The Italian articles in A. Michel’s Histoire de I’ Art, Paris, are ex- 
cellent. 

Manuats. Bernard Berenson’s four Handbooks, Venetian Painters of the 
Renaissance, Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, Central Italian Painters of 
the Renaissance, and Northern Italian Painters of the Renaissance, New York and 
London, G. P. Putnam and Sons, are uniquely useful. Each contains a thorough 
critical discussion and lists of the works of the more important painters. The 
_ latest editions should be used. 

A Short History of Italian Painting, by Alice van Vechten Brown and William 
Rankin, Dent-Dutton, 1914, offers brilliant, if uneven, characterizations and 
able summaries of contested points. 

TEcHNIQUE. Consult the delightful The Book of Art by Cennino Cennini, 
edited by Christiana J. Herringham, London: George Allen, 1922, for methods 
of painting in tempera and fresco. 

Brocrapuy. Giorgio Vasari’s picturesque Lives of the Painters may most 
profitably be read in the translation of Gaston DuC. de Vere, in ten volumes, 
London: Philip Lee Warner; New York: The Macmillan Company. There 
are many color-prints. The matter is available inexpensively in the handy 
“Temple Classics.” Mrs. Ady, ‘Julia Cartwright,” has epitomized the 
chief lives agreeably, with necessary corrections, in The Painters of Florence, 
E. P. Dutton and Company, 1916. 

Periopicats. The reader may most profitably cultivate the habit of paging 
over the files of The Burlington Magazine and Art in America, Rassegna d Arte 
and [’ Arte, which contain good reproductions of many fine Italian pictures in 
private collections. 

HistoricaL Backcrounp. Excellent the many Italian Chapters in Henry 
Osborn Taylor’s The Mediaeval Mind, in two volumes, The Macmillan Com- 
pany, 1911. For Florentine conditions consult Guido Biagi, Men and Manners 
of Old Florence, Chicago, A. C. McClurg and Company, 1909, and The 
Builders of Florence, by J. Wood Brown, London, Methuen and Company, 1907. 


489 


490 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PAINTING 


PHOTOGRAPHS, etc. The ideal way to use a handbook would be to skim it 
before visiting a great European gallery and to reread it carefully while the 
impression of the pictures themselves was still vivid. But the student must 
also depend much on photographic reproductions. For Italy those of Messrs. 
Alinari at Florence and of Dominick Anderson at Rome are comprehensive, 
finely made, and remarkably cheap. Alinari has most of the Italian paintings 
of the Louvre and Dresden Gallery; Anderson, those of the Prado, Madrid, 
and National Gallery, London. The collections of Hanfstaengl and of Bruck- 
mann, Munich, cover most of the galleries of Northern and Central Europe. 
Photographs of the Italian pictures in the Metropolitan Museum, New York; 
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Mass., and 
the Jarves Collection, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., may be purchased 
from those museums. Besides these four main collections of Italian pictures 
in America, that of the New York Historical Society, New York, and of Mrs. 
John L. Gardner, Fenway Court, Boston, occasionally open to the public, are 
noteworthy. The art museums of Worcester, Mass., Providence, R. I., Cleve- 
land, O., Indianapolis, Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis have Italian pictures 
of quality. There is something in the Wilstach Gallery, Philadelphia, and 
whenever the John G. ‘Johnson Collection shall be worthily exhibited, Phila- 
delphia will be rich indeed in Italian art. The student should not fail to utilize 
such local resources, however slight they may seem, for one minor original 
thoroughly enjoyed is worth days of poring over reproductions. 

For students who cannot afford a considerable number of photographs, the 
University Prints, Newton, Mass., afford a tolerable substitute. For quick 
reference the numerous cuts in Venturi’s monumental Storia dell’ Arte Italiana, 
Milan, Ulrico Hoepli, are very useful. The halftones in the “Kiinstler Mono-_ 
grafien,” Leipzig, Velhagen and Klasing, and the larger prints in the “ Klassiker 
der Kunst,” Stuttgart and Leipzig, serve a similar purpose. Details may be 
had from any importing bookseller. 


INDEX 


Where an artist has a family name, that is the indexed word, e.g., Bellini, 
Giovanni. Where there is no surname, the Christian name is used, e.g., Nardo 
di Cione, Andrea da Bologna. So is the Christian name the index word when 
an apparent surname is really only descriptive of birthplace or civil estate, — 
e.g., Domenico Veneziano, Lorenzo Monaco. In the case of well-known artists, 
the most familiar name is employed, e.g., Angelico, Fra; Giorgione, Titian, 
Perugino, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Botticelli, Michelangelo, etc. 


Academic, light and shade, Leonardo, 
226; theory of generalization, Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, 318; of selection 
and Belle Nature, Leonardo, 258; 
L. Dolce, 445 

Altar, as shrine and tomb, influence 
on subjects of painting, 7 

Alunno (Niccold Liberatore), 273 

Andrea da Bologna, 271 

Andrea del Castagno, 146-147, 201 

Andrea del Sarto, 248-253 

Angelico of Fiesole, Fra, 112, 114-122, 
267 

Antonello da Messina, 345-348, 355, 
360 

Antonio da Negroponte, 335 

Ariosto, list of greatest painters, 385 


Baldovinetti, Alesso, 148, an official 
appraisal of his frescoes, 153 

Barna of Siena, 88, 89 

Bartolo di Fredi, 86 

Baroque decorative painting, derives 
from Mantegna, 337, 340-341; 
Correggio, 340, 415-416; ‘Tiepolo, 
442; Influence of Catholic Reac- 
tion on mood of, 459 

Bartolommeo, Fra _ (Baccio 
Porta), 246, 247-248, 282, 290 

Bartolommeo della Gatta, Don, 177 


della 


491 


Bellini, Gentile, 348-352, 364 

Bellini, Giovanni, 324, 352-362, 369 

Bellini, Jacopo, 330-333, 334 

Bembo, Pietro, 373 

Benvenuto di Giovanni, 99 

Birth salvers (deschi da parto), 99, 
128, 181 

Bologna School and_ Eclecticism, 
passim, 458-465, 471 

Bonfigli, Benedetto, 271 

Botticelli, Sandro (Alessandro di 
Mariano Filipepi), 122, 163, 175, 
1545 202-220, 255 

Brancacci Chapel, 
frescoes, 131-141 

Byzantine manner, 10-12; in Venetia, 
324, 326, 327 

Bartolommeo di Giovanni, 183 

Bassano, Jacopo and Leandro, 424 

Bonauiti, Andrea, decorator of the 
Spanish Chapel, 51-53 

Bronzino, Agnolo, 251 

Brunellesco, investigator of perspee- 
tive, 110 


problem of the 


Canale, Antonio, 442 

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Amerighi), 
453-456, 470 

Carpaccio, Victor, 364-370 

Carracci, their academy at Bologna, 


492 


461. Carlo Malvasia on _ the 
Eclecticism of the C., 471 
Carracci, Annibale, 453, 
sonnet ascribed to, 471 
Cassone painters, before 1450, 127- 
130; after 1450, 180-183 
Castiglione, Baldassare, 266, 
list of greatest artists, 315 
Cavallini, Pietro, 16-18 
Cimabue, 12, 14-15, 20 
Classic Spirit, Kenyon Cox on, 319 
Correggio (Antonio Allegri), 340, 415- 
417. Initiator of the Baroque 
Manner, 416 
Cox, Kenyon, on the Classic Spirit, 
319 
Crivelli, Carlo, 267, 271, 334-335 


459-465; 


298; 


Dante, 3, 8; Giotto’s portrait of, 40; 
Botticelli’s drawings for, 215 

Domenico di Bartolo, 89 

Domenico Veneziano, 147-148, 168, 
201, 267, 271 

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), 
465, 467-469 

Donatello, 110, 333 

Duccio di Buoninsegna, 12, 13, 6c, 
63-72. Procession on installation 
of his great Madonna, 106 


Florence, about 1300 described, 2-4, 
55; the new looser manners after 
the plague. of 1348,-, 110, 111; 
Renaissance pageantry in, 195-196; 
Savonarola’s revolution, 193, 215, 
302; End of liberty in and demoral- 
ization, 320 

Folgore da San Gemignano, Sienese 
sonnet quoted, 104 

Francesco di Giorgio, 100 

Francis of Assisi, St., initiator of the 
new emotionalism in painting, 7, 8 

Fresco, method of painting in, 6 


INDEX 


Gaddi, Agnolo, 46 

Gaddi, Gaddo, possibly to be identi- 
fied with the “Isaac Master,” 18 

Gaddi, Taddeo, 40, 45, 46 

Gentile da Fabriano, 267-270, 328, 
330 

Ghiberti, Lorenzo, Sienese anecdote 
by, 104; his studies, 109 

Ghirlandaio (Domenico Bigordi), 122, 
142, 143, 177, 184-194 

Giorgione, 370-383; problem of, 370; 


early works, 371, 372; his Ar- 
cadianism related to _ pastoral 
poetry, 373-374; his dreamy 


and indeterminate mood, 374-3773; 
Castelfranco Madonna, and other 
later works, 378-380; pastoral 
symphony, 380-382; The Concert, 
its problems, 381-382; Summary, 
383; Suggestion of G’s subjects 
in Leonardo’s “Trattato,” 385-386 

Giottino, 46 

Giotto’s pupils, “Master of the Right 
Transept,” 43-45; Taddeo Gaddi, 
45, 46; Buffalmacco, 46; Bernardo 
Daddi, 46; Giottino, 46, 47 

Giotto di Bondone, 18; early work at 
Assisi, 20-22; at Rome, 23; at 


Padua, 23-29; later work, the 
Allegories at Assisi, 31-34; at 
Santa Croce, 34-39; The Cam- 


panile and last phase, 40, 41; 
general characterization, 42, 433 
poem by, 56; mentioned, 136, 267 

Giovanni di Paolo, 93-95 

Girolamo di Benvenuto, 99 

Giulio Romano, 294, 297, 452-453 

Gozzoli, Benozzo, 142, 143, 165-166, 
267, 271 

Grand style defined, 265-266; Sir 
Joshua Reynolds on, 318-319; L. 
Dolce on, in Titian, 445 

Guariento of Padua, 324 

Goya, Francisco, quoted, 131 


INDEX 


Guardi, Francesco, 443 
Guido of Siena, 12 


Gaddo 


“Isaac Master,” perhaps 


Gaddi, 18 

Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Man- 
tua, relations with Mantegna, 343; 
Opinion of him, 384 


Landscape, new sense of the pic- 
turesque in, and Salvator Rosa, 
456-457 

LeBrun, Charles, dependence as 
decorator on A. Carracci, 465 

Leonardo da Vinci, 1, on Masaccio, 
151, 202, 223-235, 260; His new 
principles, 224; Early Florentine 
period, 225-237; Adoration of the 
Magi, 233-236; Madonna of the 
Rocks, 236; First Milanese period, 
238-240; Last Supper, 239-240; 
Second Florentine Period; Mona 
Lisa, Anghiari, 239-241; Second 
Milanese Period, St. Ann, Second 
Madonna of the Rocks, 243-244; 
Roma and France, 244-245; His 
Influence, 245-246; Tractate on 
Painting, 257-260, 285, 286, 287, 
290, 292, 300, 371, 383, 385 

Lomazzo, Paolo, Great Italian paint- 
ers compared with the poets, 385 

Longhi, Pietro, 444 

Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 40, 42-45, 72, 
76, 79, 84 

Lorenzetti, Pietro, 76-78. Followers 
Oremateenssist, 75.» Contract for 
Arezzo altar-piece, 105-106 

Lorenzetti followers, Triumph of 
Death, Pisa, 88, 89 

Lorenzettian, panoramic style, 86, 
$20,172 

Lotto, Lorenzo, 411-413 

Lorenzo de’Medici, his birth-salver, 
181-184 


493 


Lorenzo Monaco, Don, 112 
Lorenzo da San Severino, 272 
Lorenzo Veneziano, 326, 327 


Mantegna, Andrea, 333, 337-345, 348, 
352, 355, 356. Titian on, 324 

Marcovaldo, Coppo di, 62 

Masaccio (Tommaso di Ser Giovanni 
di Tommaso Guidi), 50, 130-142, 
I51, 201 

Masolino da Panicale, 122-127 

Matteo di Giovanni, of Siena, 97-99 

Melozzo da Forli, 273-274 

Michelangelo Buonarotti, 19, 193, 
263; perturbing influence on Raph- 
ael, 288, 294, 295; Early works; 
Doni Madonna, The Bathers, 301- 
303; The Sistine Ceiling, 304-313; 
The Last Judgment, 313-314; 
Defects of his followers, 315; 
Advice on posture, 317, on the 
unity of painting and sculpture, 
317, 318, 407, 429 

Michelozzo, 115 

Modern sensibility, in Pontormo, 253; 
Moretto, Lotto, Correggio, Tinto- 
retto, 41I 

Moretto of Brescia, 412-413 

Moroni, Giambattista, 423 


Nardo di Cione, 48 
Neroccio di Landi, 100 


Oil Painting, introduced at Florence 


by Domenico Veneziano, 147, prac- 
ticed in Lombardy by Antonello da 
Messina, 345 
Orcagna (Andrea di Cione), 47-50; 
Contract for Strozzi altar-piece, 56 
Ottaviano Nelli, 271 


Palma Giovine, on Titian’s technique, 


3990 
Palma Vecchio, 407, 411 


494 


Paolo Veronese (Caliari), 436-440 
Pastoral poetry as background of 
Giorgione’s inventions, 370-374 
Perspective, discovery by Brunellesco, 
110, Uccello’s experiments in, 144, 
152; Piero della Francesca’s book 
on, 169; Mantegna’s illusionistic, 
3375 339-340; further developed by 
Correggio, 340, 415-416 

Perugino (Pietro Vannucci), 117, 178, 
22% 9205, €260,.42 70-200, 2n3.eeen, 
297, 267, 271, 273, 278-282, 285, 
290, 299 

Pesellino, Francesco, 181 

Piero della Francesca, 169-172, 201, 


273 

Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 158, 166-169, 
201,1205 

Piero di Cosimo, 177, 202, 221-223, 
246 


Pintorricchio, 101, 174 

Pisanello (Antonio Pisano), 328 

Plague banners, Umbrian, 263, 313 

Poliziano, Angelo, his poetry as an 
inspiration for Botticelli, Raphael, 
Titian, 255-256 

Pontormo (Jacopo Carrucci), 253 

Poussin, Nicholas, derives from Raph- 
ael and the Eclectics, 458 


Raphael Sanzio, 19, 256, 263; His 
Umbrian beginnings, 282-283. At 
Florence, 283-288. At Rome, The 
Segnatura, 289-293; 
Heliodorus and of the Incendio, 
294-296. Last works, 296-309 

Realists, Early Florentine, enumer- 
ated, 143 

Reni, Guido, 465-466 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, on the Grand 
style, 318-319 

Rodin, Auguste, on Michelangelo, 313 

Roman revival before 1300, 16 


Rosa, Salvator, 456-457 


Stanze of. 


INDEX 


Rosselli, Cosimo, 172, 221 

Rubens, Peter Paul, his praise of 
Leonardo, 258, derives from Titian, 
468 


Sannazaro, Jacopo, 373, 37> 

Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni), 72, 
90-92 

Sebastiano del Piombo, 295, 408-409 

Signorelli, Luca, 176, 273-278 

Sistine Chapel, early frescoes an- 
alyzed, 173-179 

Savonarola, Fra Girolamo, 193, 215, 
217,302 

St. Dominic, 8, 52 

Siena, the Sienese temperament 
illustrated, 59-61; its artistic con- 
servation, 61 

Simone Martini, 72-76, 267 

Sodoma (Antonio Bazzi), 102, 471 

Squarcione, Francesco, School of, 334 

Starnina, Gherardo, 50 


Tempera, painting in, 5, 6 

Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 440-442, 
444 

Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti), 424-435 

Titian of Cadore (Tiziano Vecellio), 
256, 389-408, 418-423. His calcu- 
lating character and_ technique, 
389-390; his four periods, 390-391; 
Early, Giorgionesque period, 392-— 
398; (1515-1533), 396-404; (1533- 
1548), 404-407; (1548-1577), sub- 
jective and impressionistic phase, 
418-423. Lodovico Dolce on T’s 
impressionism in landscape, 446; 
G. F. Watt on T’s_ classical 
quality, 446 

Tommeé, Luca, 86 

Torriti (Jacopo), 12 


Uccello, Paolo, 143-144, 152, 201, 334 
Umbria, its characteristics, 266-267; 
foreign painters in, 267 


INDEX 


Vasari, Giorgio, on Masaccio, 151; 
on Paolo Uccello, 152; on a Trick 
to get a chapel, 196-197; on the 
“Modern style,” 316, 317; boasts 
of his own dexterity, 451. 

Velasquez, draws from Caravaggio 
and the Italian Tenebrists, 456, 
470 

Venice, its colorful 
nature of its 
326 


and 
323- 


aspect, 
civilization, 


Veronese, see Paolo Veronese 


495 


Veronese, early panoramic manner, 
328-330, 331 

Verrocchio, Andrea, 158, 201, 203, 
227-230 

Villani, Giovanni, summary of Flor- 
ence, 9, 54-56 

Villani, Matteo, on the relaxation of 
Florentine morals after the plague 
of 1348, IIO-III 

Vivarini, Antonio, 330, 363 

Vivarini, Bartolommeo, 362, 363 

Vivarini, Alvise, 363 


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